


Atlantis Never Left

by Sayle



Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alternate Universe, Atlantis, Episode: s01e19 Solitudes, Gen, Jack O'Neill's Least Favourite Continent
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-29
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-08-11 20:03:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 23,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7905802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sayle/pseuds/Sayle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Atlantis was the capital of the Ancient civilization in the Milky Way, a megapolis tens of kilometers across and host to millions of people. When the plague hits before the stardrive can be completed, the survivors are left with a difficult decision to abandon the city through the Stargate. Abandoned, the vast city drifts south...and human history changes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The metropolis of Atlantis spread out beneath the balcony in a luminous net of light, the City of Ten Thousand Towers shining against the night like a carpet of jewels. In the darkness he couldn’t see the crystallized light of the shield woven around infected towers, an unbreakable aegis that imprisoned the people within. He couldn’t see the soft shimmer of the quarantine fields isolating each and every building until they were determined clean or contaminated.

He could almost pretend that in his mind he couldn’t hear the continous beep of the sensors logging the population of the city as it fell down, down, down…

Marcus shook his head and released his white-knuckled grip on the balcony railing, stepping back and through the sliding door into the ad hoc command center they had established nearly at the apex of the main tower. The discussion about whether they had waited long enough was finishing up as the door closed behind him.

“We’ve waited out the maximum known incubation period then half that again,” Ayiana said with finality. “If a section isn’t infected by now, it isn’t.”

“So where does that leave us?” Marcus asked as he reasserted himself into the conversation. “In terms of the evacuation, I mean.”

Vespasian signed, the darker-skinned man sitting on one of the console chairs with his hands clasped together. “We had hoped some of the ships would be clean, but none capable of making the trip are in clean areas.”

“Obviously the city isn’t going anywhere,” Ayiana agreed, propping her head up with one hand. “The stardrive might have been completed before the outbreak, but we can’t risk carrying the plague with us. Even with a complete purge of the capital we know that it’s no guarantee. We’d have to raze everything down to the superstructure, and then what’s the point?”

“So that leaves the Stargate,” Marcus concluded. “As we agreed beforehand.” He glanced at Vespasian. “Is the embarkation area safe?”

“It’s below the quarantine boundary,” he replied. “We swept the tower clean down to that level. The Stargate survived the purge cycle, and the environment has been cooling for the last week. It doesn’t look pretty, and all the local controls have been completely destroyed, but the gate itself is completely functional.”

Ayiana hummed thoughtfully. “How are we going to get people down there? I’m guessing the transit stations were damaged by the purge, and I doubt the stairs survived.”

“They survived,” Vespasian corrected her. “Maybe not the color or even the plates, but the trinium lattice and supports stood up. They look flimsy but they’ll hold just fine.”

“Wait,” Marcus interrupted. “If the local controls have been destroyed, how are we going to dial out?” He looked around the room, not seeing the comprehension he had been expecting. “You do realise that the city won’t release the power to dial intergalactically without the right control crystal? The thermal tap isn’t enough.”

Ayiana and Vespasian shared a look. She spoke first. “There’s a secondary control room a few levels below the embarkation area.”

“That’s infected space,” he replied. “It’s a death sentence.”

“If we purge we’ll destroy the controls,” Ayiana observed. “We could rewrite the control systems. Remove the authorization requirement.”

“Control systems we locked out to stop tampering from the infected areas,” Vespasian replied. “Lift that lockout and the quarantine won’t hold.”

“I’ll go.”

“Someone down there must still be alive,” Ayiana said. “We could get them to do it.”

Vespasian shook his head. “The control tower was one of the first places to be infected. There’s less than twenty lifesigns left below the quarantine shields and none of them have checked in for days.”

“I’ll go,” Marcus repeated.

Ayiana sighed, finally turning to him. “Marcus…”

“My sister is dead,” he said flatly. “My brother bled out from his eyes and mouth over a week ago in a tower I sent him into.”

“We’ve all checked towers,” Vespasian reminded him gently. “We all knew what would happen if we found any trace of the plague. We couldn’t trust people to report the truth after-”

“I know,” Marcus interrupted. “I also know that my daughter’s body is a liquefying puddle somewhere at the edge of the southwest pier.” He held Ayiana’s gaze. “I’ll go,” he repeated. “Then I’ll lock out the Stargate entirely after you’re all gone. Nothing in, nothing out.”

Ayiana pursed her lips into a thin line. “Walking in there is a death sentence. Even if you don’t get infected, you have to assume you are.”

“I’ll take some supplies,” Marcus replied quietly. “Enough for a few weeks. Maybe enough to ascend. Not like I’ll have anything else to do.” He gave her a thin smile. “Don’t worry. What’s one more dead man? I’ll have millions more to keep me company.”

 

The quarantine field tingled as he passed through it, the energy shield returning to forbidding solidity behind his back. His friends behind him were reduced to blurry facsimiles, the intensity of the barrier refracting the light into an almost incomprehensible mess. Marcus shifted the straps of his backpack and stepped onto the first flight of stairs down, the gentle spiral guiding him down deeper into quarantine. The air was stale after weeks of isolation, and he could distantly smell...no, he couldn’t focus on that.

Hopping off the staircase after about a minute of slow, slow descent, he stepped out onto the elevated floor which contained secondary controls for many of the city systems. One of them was larger than the others, the traditional circular dial of glyphs and central globe rendered in miniature on the sloping face of the desk-like control panel. He took a seat, but the displays remained dark.

“I’m in position,” he said. “Ready when you are.”

“Restoring power now,” Ayiana replied, voice emanating from the air all around him. “The first wave is ready.”

There was a muted electronic hum as the controls came to life. He tapped the first symbol, which illuminated from below in a crisp yellow light. With a small mental nudge the display at the heart of the console came to life, showing the first chevron on the Stargate glowing a ruddy orange. He could see the evacuees waiting in the wings, and tapped out the remainder of the glyphs in quick succession before laying a palm on the red dome at the center of the dialing device.

The stargate activated in a wash of blue light. The evacuation had begun.

 

It took days and dozens of intergalactic connections to send the remaining uninfected population through the Stargate, and by the time his friends stepped through the gate with the last group Marcus was just tired. He had said his goodbyes, emotionally exhausting as they were, and as the event horizon first brightened to an opaque white then tore apart he was left alone.

He had to admit that the temptation was there. He hadn’t come into contact with anyone infected, and he was sure that with enough effort and access to some of the systems he could bypass the quarantine shield and reach the Stargate. He reached out for the console and slowly began to write his code. Without access to the operating system of the city he couldn’t make rewrite or override existing code, only splice in new instructions between operations. But what he could do would suffice.

The Stargate showed no outward signs of his tampering as he inserted his malicious code. Even a simple link with the dialing device beside him would reset it to standard and purge his changes, as would any incoming wormholes with their own dialing devices which had the original operating code. But that wouldn’t be a problem. He methodically proceeded to cut it off from the rest of the Gate system, blinding it to its current spatial coordinates and the address it should answer to. He added in an almost unnoticeable wait time of several milliseconds in the activation code for the wormhole capture subroutine, long enough for any dialing gate to assume it was somehow damaged and abort the attempt.

That should be enough to stop any incoming wormholes. Marcus reached into his backpack and withdrew a small flask, the metal humming slightly beneath his fingers as it distilled pure water from the atmosphere. By the time he had pulled off the cap it was already full, and he took a short drink. With incoming wormholes dealt with, that left the risk of someone infected and able to get to the controls dialing out and undoing all his alterations in the process. Privately he doubted anyone left alive the in the city at this point was capable, but the Plague could cause delirium, and he was right here. The quarantine systems were locked out for as long as the sensors detected the infection, but he might be able to access the defensive protocols…

He let out a short cough to clear his throat and got to work.


	2. Solitudes 1

The Stargate had remained dark for tens of tens of thousands of years in more ways than one. Long after her last inhabitants had died and Atlantis was home only to the quiet hum of the quarantine shield, the grand city had shifted south, endless years of ocean currents slowly but surely driving her towards the southern pole. Her structural integrity field preserved her against mighty storms and even the occasional showers of meteorites falling to Earth. When at last the ocean iced around her, the field reinforced that as well.

When the southern latitudes felt the full brunt of the ice age, glaciers that measured above most of her towers slowly but surely ground over her, only their material construction and the structural field preserving them. Eventually even the glaciers yielded, and Atlantis was surrounded and entombed in ice. Only the main tower now jutted above the surface, scarcely a hundred meters of its multi-kilometer spire visible.

When the Goa’uld came, the defenses of the city were tested for the first time, and until the mighty pyramids and temples to glorify him were constructed along the Nile it was there that Ra set his throne. He parceled out some gatebuilder artifacts to his vassals as shows of favour, but the depths of the city below the ice and further down the tower stubbornly refused to yield to him. The shields took their power straight from the molten core of the planet, and that even the Supreme System Lord could not overcome.

When rebellion engulfed the planet and Ra was driven from the source of his slaves, the tower stood empty again. The next being to gain entry was none other than the Norwegian Amundsen, whose supplies had been left at the base of the tower which was a convenient landmark for the polar trek and now marked the edges of Antarctica’s far reaches. Amundsen had not come unprepared, and managed to scale the side with an ingenious use of specially constructed atmospheric knobs (later known as suction cups) to anchor to the parts of the tower where ledges and balconies could not be reached by ladders.

Amundsen and his group took the first ever pictures of the interior, and the polar explorer was fascinated by the Egyptian relics within. But weather was his prime rival for the pole, and he did not stay long when conditions improved. Over the following decades many others visited, but the tower remained undisturbed after all artifacts of note had been moved away to museums and collections across the world. As Ra before them had removed all Ancient artifacts he could, humanity took all of Ra’s and left nothing behind but stark walls.

The city caught the imagination of the world, and while facing a chilly reception by other Egyptologists for his theory of the pyramids being landing pads for alien ships, one Daniel Jackson wasn’t booed out of the hall either. It was widely accepted that the Egyptians who built the pyramids had possessed ancient wisdom and secret techniques that let them sail as far south as Antarctica, after all. Interest waned as time went on, however, though the interest never truly died. By the mid-nineties it was entering widespread acceptance that there was a far greater complex hidden below the ice, the shadow of the city superstructure being opaque to seismographs and even being visible to some satellites. Only the limitations imposed by intractable weather and logistical concerns prevented expeditions being made to try to tunnel under the impassable curtains of light which barred entry to the depths of the tower.

The city remained empty until 1998. The Stargate of the inventively designated P4A-771 had been connected to Earth via the Cheyenne Mountain facility, but the bombardment of staff weapon fire from hostile Jaffa overloaded the gate. The power surge on the opposite end threatened to disrupt the event horizon. Here a DHD would have regulated the power flow and stabilized the mouth of the wormhole, and by extension the lives of travellers whose constituent atoms were hurtling down the wormhole to be reintegrated on the other end.

The SGC did not have a DHD. The Cheyenne gate struggled to maintain its event horizon. Excess power was translated into momentum which hurled Daniel Jackson and Teal’c out at speeds more commonly associated with bowling balls. The power surged again and crossed the threshold, and the Stargate did the only thing it could do to prevent any matter attempting to exit the wormhole emerging as a spray of hard radiation (and most definitely killing anyone in the line of fire) - it shut down entirely and dumped every joule of power in its capacitors. Half the circuits in the gateroom promptly slagged themselves under the load, taking the SGC out of commission in a shower of pyrotechnics.

But the wormhole remained. Some two humans-worth of atomic material was hurtling down the matter stream, and the now unpowered Stargate was no longer accepting any connections. Atlantis’ Stargate had been inactive for a long time, the functions which would allow it to accept incoming wormholes for Earth’s address disabled. So far as the Stargate was concerned, the only address it knew was its own specific eight-glyph code used for nine-chevron connections.

Except now the gate had received no connection requests to ignore, no subspace link informing it to begin to activate its chevrons to warn nearby people of an incoming wormhole that it could decline. All it had was an already active wormhole without a destination Stargate. Several milliseconds elapsed, and the wormhole remained as the P4A-771 Stargate refused to shut down with travellers en route. So it performed the most basic function it had, and anchored it. The event horizon activated in an explosion of light, and it had barely reined in the unstable kawoosh when Colonel Jack O’Neill and Captain Samantha Carter came flying out at similar speeds the other half of the team had seconds before and thousands of kilometers away.

They didn’t even remember hitting the floor. The Stargate shut down behind them, throwing the room into darkness. They were in no position to see the thirty-nine symbols on its inner track shift as it assimilated the data it had received from the DHD on the other side of the wormhole, and they lacked the capability altogether to see the system reset of the gate itself back to standard.

Atlantis was back on the grid.

 

Carter woke first, startling slightly from where she lay crumpled on the ground a short way from the gate. The first thing she noticed was that it was cold. Very. The second was that it was dark, and she pushed herself up to a kneeling position to look around. There was some very slight illumination small crystal panes slotted into the walls seeming to be lit by an inner light. Unfortunately that was all she could see, since they didn’t produce enough light to see anything else. Reaching for her jacket she withdrew the small flashlight she carried with her and turned it on, the sudden radiance almost blinding.

The floor was smooth, a reddish orange cut through with darker lines that stretched out across it. But her attention was immediately caught when it came across a prostrate body only about a meter from her. “Colonel?” No response. She quickly scrambled forward on her knees to check him, biting the fingertip of her glove and pulling it off so she could put bare fingers to his neck. It pulsed slowly beneath her, but the skin was cold.

“Damn,” she breathed, pulling back and checking him for injuries. Aside from being unconscious he seemed fine, but she quickly revised her opinion when she saw his ankle. Even beneath his boot she could see that it was in an odd position and swollen. “Damn,” she repeated, and reached for her vest radio as she stood up and started to look around. “Daniel, Teal’c, come in.”

She took a step away from the colonel, and looked around the floor, trying to see if they were nearby. “Daniel, Teal’c, come in.”

Carter bit her lip. Unfamiliar surroundings, her commanding officer was unconscious and injured, and half the team was missing. This was a problem. Turning around to pan her flashlight this way and that, it looked like they were in a pretty open area. She should be able to explore a bit without straying out of sight of Colonel O’Neill. With a careful look at her injured teammate she stepped away and started to investigate.

 

Sam passed the beam of her flashlight over the stairs, eyes narrowed as she examined them. The edges seeming almost...blunted, like they had been subjected to a blowtorch. It was a common theme through the whole area, consoles covered in crystals which had been subjected to heat stress and cracked, finer looking details like engravings on the edges of the half-desk half-technological devices smoothed over and smudged.

“What, did we redecorate when I wasn’t looking?” O’Neill groaned as he stirred, coming back to consciousness. He squinted as Carter turned back to him, her flashlight almost the only source of illumination in the darkened chamber.

“Sir!” She hurried over, dropping down to her knees. “Take it easy. I think you might have broken your ankle.”

“Guh,” Jack replied articulately, pushing himself up to a sitting position. “No, I’ve definitely broken my ankle.”

Carter bit her lip. “You’ve got a lot of swelling,” she said worriedly. “You shouldn’t put any weight on it.”

“I’d ask for an ice pack,” he grunted. “But this whole place feels like one.”

“It’s pretty cold,” she agreed, and pointed her light behind the Stargate. “That’s a window, but it’s completely dark on the other side. I think we might be underground.”

“Who puts a window underground?” O’Neill grunted, twisting his torso to look at the illuminated glass.

“Well,” Carter said. “It probably wasn’t underground to start with. After thousands of years this chamber could be buried.” She bit the inside of her cheek. “Or...trapped in a glacier.”

Jack turned to her. “What?” he asked. “Are you saying we’re in the middle of a giant block of ice?”

“Maybe,” she admitted. “It’s hard to tell. There’s a flight of stairs that goes down, but the way up seems damaged. I didn’t want to look around while you were still out.”

O’Neill took this in, then turned to look around as much as he could. “Captain,” he asked politely. “Where’s the DHD?”

“I haven’t found it yet, sir.”

“Ah,” he said, looking around again. “For that matter, where’s Daniel and Teal’c?”

“I haven’t found them either.”

O’Neill reached for his radio, but Carter reached out and interrupted him. “Sir, I’ve already tried that.” She sighed. “If they’re here, they aren’t answering their radios.”

“So where are they?” he asked pointedly. “And where are we?

Carter sighed again, shaking her head. “I...don’t know, sir.”

Jack lay back with a thud, breath whooshing out in a plume of condensation. “...great.”

Sam let out a long breath, thinking. “I don’t know what the temperature in here is specifically-”

“Cold?” O’Neill suggested acerbically.

“-but even if we aren’t hypothermic just yet, it’s only a matter of time.” Here Carter would probably have looked usually have looked apologetic, but right now she just looked grim. “Sorry, sir.”

O’Neill absorbed this for a long moment. “Right,” he said eventually. “Get to it, Captain.”

“Yes, sir.”

 

Sam took a careful step off of the spiral staircase, her breath puffing out in a jet of condensation. It was bitterly, bitterly cold, and every window she had seen was completely dark. She had her theory of where they were, but the one thing she couldn’t reconcile was the Stargate. Her only guess was that it was damaged, that whatever had damaged the whole room it was in had damaged it too, but...she shook her head. Whatever had done the damage hadn’t extended this far down, the stairs intact. Now she hadn’t seen anything quite like the distinctive pedestal of a DHD, even wrecked, so she was hoping one had to be nearby.

Her flashlight was dim in her hand, batteries struggling to maintain the charge. She reached to one of her vest pouches where she had slotted the batteries from the Colonel’s flashlight, only to hesitate when the beam of weak illumination revealed a series of consoles in the room she had stepped out into. Abandoning the batteries she quickly stepped over, playing the light over the distinctly technological panels. Some were almost entirely flat with only faintly raised edges, but others had the style of pushable buttons. She reached out for one and tapped it, but nothing happened.

Biting her lip at the failure and worried that there might not be any power, she turned to the next console. Again, it failed to react to her increasingly insistent pushes at the larger buttons. Increasingly frustrated she stepped over to the largest one, only to freeze at the familiar sight of a small but nonetheless instantly recognisable DHD dial mounted to one side. Hurrying around to the front, she played the dim light in her hand over it to familiarize herself with the layout.

Thirty nine totally incomprehensible glyphs stared back up at her, patterns she had never seen arrayed around the central globe. “What the…” she muttered. She reached out a gloved hand to brush at them, as if the symbols were some kind of mask overlaid over the familiar and vital constellations she knew. Suddenly the surface of the dial seemed to writhe, and she jerked her hand back with the muffled curse. But when the surge of adrenaline that electrified her nerves began to fade, the patterns were different. Orion, Sagittarius, Cancer...the DHD had changed in front of her eyes, the strange glyphs seeming to shift without noise or any sign into the configuration she had dealt with the entire year she had been on SG1.

Her lightning-quick mind immediately slotted the clues together in a single realization. Why did every Stargate have constellations as seen from Earth for symbols? When they thought the Goa’uld had built the network that had made sense, but afterwards it was a struggle to find a reason. When they had evidence that some gates were tens of thousands of years old at least, long before those constellations had existed in their modern forms…

She shook her head, and reached for her radio. “Sir, I’ve found a DHD. It’s not exactly like the ones we’re used to, but I think it still has power.” She released the talk button.

It crackled to life a moment later. “Any time, Captain.” There was a pause. “Break a leg.”

She took that on board with a little tilt of her head and a small breath out. “Yes sir,” she said to herself, and reached carefully for the first glyph. Then she pressed firmly, and Auriga lit beneath her hand with an inner yellow light. Letting out a slower, somewhat more shaky breath, she moved her hand down and across to Cetus. When that too illuminated, she moved more quickly. Centaurus, Cancer, Scutum. Eridanus came to life with a solid thunk. The just left the point of origin. Right below Eridanus was an unfamiliar symbol, a round circle above a straight line. She carefully lowered her hand to it, and it activated with the same sharp clarity which highlighted the other glyphs. She reached for her radio with her other hand.

“Sir, I’ve dialed the symbols. Are the chevrons locked?” Simulations had never established if DHDs still responded if they weren’t paired with the gate, and she hadn’t had an opportunity to test the theory herself for obvious reasons.

“Like a Christmas tree,” O’Neill replied. “Light her up.”

“Yes, sir,” she agreed, this time much more firmly. She laid a hand on the red dome at the center of the dial and pressed, the crystalline half-globe lighting from within. She waited a second, listening. The gate could be pretty loud when it activated, and it was only a few floors up the stairs. She reached for the radio again. “Sir?” The DHD suddenly went dark.

“Nothing happened, Carter.” She straightened up in surprise, looking down at the DHD. If the Gate hadn’t reacted at all she would have understood, but that the chevrons even locked meant it should have had enough power to dial out, even if the DHD wasn’t feeding it the needed energy.

“You’re sure the seventh chevron was locked?” she asked. If it wasn’t a valid address or there was a problem the Gate didn’t lock on the final symbol. That would at least be an explanation.

“Glowing and everything,” the Colonel confirmed. “What happened?”

Carter made a helpless noise. “I don’t know. I dialed Earth.” She released the talk button and paused a moment, mind slowly turning over an idea. “Sir, hang on a second. I’m going to try something.” She looked down on the DHD, eyes skittering over the glyphs. The Land of Light, the Land of Light...she reached for the first symbol.

Less than twenty seconds later, the Stargate roared to life and carved a path through two hundred light years. Then the multicoloured yellow-green of an energy shield snapped to life over the event horizon before it could even completely form, the unstable vortex that would usually disintegrate anything in front of the gate simply rippling against the two-dimensional surface for a few seconds. O’Neill tightened his grip on the radio. “Captain,” he said. “We may have a problem.”


	3. Solitudes 2

Sam took the stairs two at a time. She had heard the Stargate activate, but that wasn’t the confirmation she had been hoping for. When she came up to the level where the only way up were the damaged looking staircase she hopped off, and the gate was visible through an open doorway. She blinked, and turned her flashlight off as she entered the gateroom. “It’s some kind of forcefield,” she said, looking at the event horizon and the yellow-green shield over it. “Maybe like an iris.”

“That’s to stop people coming in, not going out,” O’Neill pointed out, having maneuvered himself to sit by the flight of stairs up to the second level while she was gone. “I’ve tried to raise the SGC,” he said, wiggling the radio in his hand. “No response.”

“About that, sir,” Carter winced. “We’re not dialed to Earth. It’s the Land of Light.”

“Excuse me?” O’Neill demanded. The Stargate shut down in perfect punctuation, and a heartbeat later the shield over its mouth vanished. The area was again silent and dark. Carter turned her flashlight on, the light seeming painfully dim in comparison to the bright wash of light from the event horizon and the energy shield.

“Sorry sir,” she said. “But right now I’ve got three possibilities. It’s pretty clear that Daniel and Teal’c didn’t come through the gate with us, and the chance of Daniel misdialing an active Stargate is...miniscule.”

“So where are they?” O’Neill asked. “Because we sure as hell went through the same gate.”

“Right,” Carter confirmed. “So Daniel didn't misdial, but for some reason the Stargate malfunctioned during transit.” She paused. “Don’t ask me how, I haven’t figured that part out yet.” She glanced at the Stargate. “Anyway, they got sent back to Earth, but for some reason we got sent here.”

O’Neill grunted as he shifted his leg slightly. “What’s two?”

“Two. The Stargate malfunctioned. We got sent here, Daniel and Teal’c got sent somewhere else.”

Jack nodded, letting out a deep breath that betrayed the pain he was in. “That’s two,” he grunted. “Three?”

Carter bobbed her head. “Three…” She hesitated. “The Stargate malfunctioned. Everyone got sent to Earth, but we came out through a different Stargate.”

There was a long pause. “Captain?” he asked. “Care to explain that one?”

She choked out a little laugh of incredulity. “It’s hard to believe but...look around, sir. The architecture, how cold it is, that we seem to be buried underground. I think we might be in Antarctica.”

“You’re going to have to spell that one out for me,” O’Neill replied slowly, but without the disbelief she expected. “You think we’re in Amundsen’s tower?”

“It makes sense,” she defended. “Ever since the original Abydos mission showed the influence the Goa’uld had on Egypt we’ve been trying to track down the artifacts taken from Antarctica. Now so far the ones we’ve managed to examine haven’t had alien technology, but we’re about eighty percent sure they’re Goa’uld.”

“We?” O’Neill asked pointedly. “Some extracurricular work, Captain?”

“Well, Daniel,” she amended. “He seemed pretty sure. Add that the tower is clearly a completely different design and we have evidence of two alien races on Earth. Maybe the Goa’uld conquered them, or the whole complex was already here and abandoned, but whatever happened this place is basically identical in terms of design style.”

“So how do you get that we’re in the same place?” he asked. “Why can’t we just be on another planet.”

“Two things,” Sam said, turning off her light to save the batteries. “One, we couldn’t dial Earth, but the Stargate clearly works. The point of origin locked, so we know that it was a good address.”

“So?”

“So you can’t dial a gate on the same planet,” she said. “The address would be identical. The second thing is that when I found the DHD it was completely different from normal. All the symbols were wrong. But the second I touched it they...changed.”

“To what?” he asked.

“To normal,” she said excitedly. “We always wondered why the symbols were modern constellations. Even twenty thousand years ago the stars would have been almost unrecognizable, but this is evidence that the gates change their symbols over time.”

“What does that have to do with us being on Earth?” O’Neill said. “So what if they changed?”

“To what they look like from Earth.” Carter took a deep breath. “Look, we know just from the dating of some of the gates we’ve been to that the Goa’uld didn’t build the Stargates, right? So Earth must be important somehow for the gates to all use what the stars look like from here as coordinates. We figured that it was because Ra set up camp here, but-”

“Captain!” he snapped, then groaned. “Captain?” he asked, a touch more plaintively.

“...sorry sir,” Carter apologized. “My point is that maybe the Stargates were manufactured on Earth. Or maybe the system was controlled here, or the planet was significant somehow. If the Goa’uld didn’t build the tower then it’s older than them, just like the Stargates. If I’m right and we are deeper down inside, and there’s a Stargate here, maybe this was built by the Gatebuilders.”

“That’s great and all,” O’Neill said. “But their taste in location was lousy. Now I don’t want to freeze to death, so we need to get out of here somehow.”

“Right,” Carter agreed, nodding her head in the dark. “If we can get up into the explored section then we know that there are ways to the surface. From there we might be able to radio for help.”

“Might?” he asked.

“If I’m right about where we are, we’re pretty isolated,” she admitted. “But it could be worth a shot. The problem is that efforts to get further down were stopped by unopenable doors, and we can’t seem to even turn on the lights properly.” She waved at the dimly lit crystals in the walls with a hand, though the gesture was invisible. “The other option is we dial out and get the shield down somehow. But I have no idea how to do that.”

“Better start on it, Captain,” O’Neill said. “If anyone can figure it out, it’s you.” He paused as she sat beside him. “That’s an order.”

Carter startled. “Yes, sir.” She stood up and fumbled with her flashlight.

The Stargate thunked as the first chevron locked and lit a bright orange. Then the second.

“That’s an incoming wormhole,” she realised. “Sir!”

O’Neill wordlessly pulled his M4 up from the floor beside him. Carter pulled hers up to firing position and took cover by one of the walls as the sixth and seventh chevron locked. The Stargate activated for the third time that day, the kawoosh roaring out into the room then drawing back into the mouth of the wormhole. The whole area was painted in the rippling light of the event horizon.

“The shield isn’t up!” she yelled to him over the sound of the gate, the event horizon fluctuating almost distractingly loud in the silent environment they had both become adjusted to.

“I noticed that!” he yelled back.

Then their radios crackled to life. “SGC, this SG3. Returning MALP on schedule. No sign of Colonel O’Neill and Captain Carter around the gate. We’re starting our recon. Over.”

O’Neill reached his first. “This is Colonel O’Neill. Castleman, is that you?”

There was a moment of silence. “This is Major Castleman. Colonel, you have a lot of people worried. Is Captain Carter with you?”

“Alive and well, Major,” O’Neill replied. He gestured to Carter, who reached for her radio.

“Sir, this is Captain Carter,” she announced. “Did you just dial Earth?”

“That is correct. If you can tell us where you are in relation to the gate we can take you home right now.”

She winced. “Sir, you aren’t connected to the SGC. We’re on the other side of the Stargate. Can you confirm that you dialed Earth?”

There was a momentary pause, and Carter could imagine them checking the DHD at that very moment. “I can confirm that, Captain. What’s going on?”

She let out a deep breath, then held down the talk button. “Sir, I need you to listen to me very carefully…”

 

The SGC was a hive of activity, the newly repaired superconductors attached to the Stargate and working at full capacity as teams were dispatched to gates all along the route from Earth to P4A-771. SG5 was waiting at the base of the ramp and making final equipment checks, but Walter Harriman was watching the clock. When it ticked over to the next minute his lips pressed together and he reached for his microphone. “General Hammond to the control room.”

Less than five seconds later the General was descending the flight of stairs from the briefing room just above. “What is it, Sergeant?” he asked.

“Sir,” Walter replied. “SG3 is overdue to return the MALP by ten minutes.”

Now it was Hammond’s turn to purse his lips. Then he leaned forward and pressed the transmit button on the microphone to let him talk to the gateroom. “SG5, stand by.” He turned to Walter. “Dial the gate.”

“Yes sir.” After almost a year of Stargate operations, he knew the position of the symbols on his keyboard by heart, and didn’t even have to pull up the address list. The Stargate began to spin as he started the dialing sequence, automated alarms coming on. The first symbol locked in a few moments later. “Chevron one encoded,” he announced.

The remaining five glyphs of the address for the planet SG3 had been sent to spun to the apex of the gate in sequence, each chevron lighting up. Just over a minute into the dial, Earth’s point of origin locked into place. “Chevron seven, locked!” The gate roared to life with the plume of the unstable vortex, then reined it in.

Hammond was on the radio the moment the gate was stable. “SG3, this is General Hammond. Please respond.”

The intercom was silent, then crackled to life as a signal was sent back through the wormhole. “General Hammond, sir, this is Major Castleman. Do not send any more teams offworld. I repeat, do not send any more teams offworld.”

Hammond didn’t understand. “What?” he demanded. “Major, explain yourself. Have you found Colonel O’Neill and Captain Carter?”

“Yes sir,” Castleman replied, prompting a muted ‘thank god’ from Daniel Jackson, who had descended to the control room as the gate dialed. “Just not the way we expected. I have a message from Captain Carter. There’s a second Stargate on Earth, and we can no longer dial the SGC.”

Hammond was silent, eyes flicking back and forth. Suddenly he was on the microphone again. “SG5, stand down. I repeat, stand down. Your mission is scrubbed.” Then he switched channels to transmit back through the gate. “Son, you need to tell me exactly what’s happening. Start from the beginning.”

“Yes, sir.”


	4. Solitudes 3

The event horizon disgorged the heavily-laden F.R.E.D. with a wet slurp, and Carter didn’t even wait for it to stop before she was unbuckling the straps that held the cases down. Without anything more coming through the wormhole the gate shut down, plunging the chamber into darkness again. But Sam already had her hands in the first crate, and a brilliantly bright beam of illumination lanced out of the blocky flashlight in her hand.

“Nice,” O’Neill said tiredly from his seat on the floor. “Don’t suppose we’ve got a heater in there.”

“Sorry, sir,” Carter replied, unbuckling another case and pulling out a thick winter coat. “Anything capable of heating up a space like this would have needed a generator, and without a way to air the fumes-”

“That’s a bad idea,” the Colonel completed. “I get it. What do we have?” He caught the coat tossed to him and slipped it on without even undoing his tactical vest, the fur-lined hood pulled up over his head.

“Well, I’ve got the medical supplies I need to splint your ankle,” she said, unloading a few cases onto the floor. “And these.” She lifted a pair of crutches from the pallet and set them down as well.

“Great,” he said, sounding unenthusiastic. “Anything more useful?”

Carter was opening several cases in quick succession, looking inside, then closing them and putting them on the floor. “We’ve got some thermal blankets, plenty of drinking water, replacement batteries…” She opened a case and stopped, pulling out a plasticine brick. “And this.”

“C4?” O’Neill asked.

“Yes, sir.” Carter confirmed. “Ten blocks and remote detonators. Hopefully enough to blow through some closed doors up to the surface.”

“Any reason it hasn’t been tried before?”

“Well, the tower has been mainly looked over by archeologists, and nobody got here with any real gear until the 1960s.” Carter went back to unloading the cases on the floor. “Just think what Daniel would say if he thought we were going to blow parts of this place up.”

“I don’t know,” O’Neill replied. “After a few hours he might change his mind. I already hate this place.”

Carter finished unloading their supplies and went to the first cases she had found to pull out a coat of her own. But what she reached for after that had O’Neill take a deep and fortifying breath.

“Sorry sir,” she said, approaching with the brace in hand. “But it’ll be a lot easier to find a way out of here if we can both look around.”

“Just do what you have to do, Captain.”

 

Some ten minutes later a somewhat sullen but nonetheless significantly more ambulatory Jack O’Neill carefully stepped off the stairs, one hand on the central pillar of the spiral and the other occupied by his crutch. Carter was waiting with at the bottom with the other half of the set, handing the crutch to him and lifting the flashlight up. Now bathed in the high-energy beam of her light the room was far more visible.

“The way I figure it,” she said. “We have a few options. The first is to try and C4 our way up. The only problem is that the way up looks damaged, and even if it does hold our weight there’s no guarantee it still will once we set off explosives.”

“So we find another way up, then,” O’Neill said. “If we don’t freeze to death.”

“Realistically speaking with the thermal blankets and supplies we can probably survive almost indefinitely,” Carter said a touch apologetically. “But so long as the Gate here takes priority over the SGC all our offworld teams are stuck.”

“That would be bad,” O’Neill agreed, condensation pluming out from his mouth as he sighed. “So what if we can’t find another way up?”

“Then we’ll have to try the C4,” Carter replied. “I’m just hoping it won’t come to that.” She stepped over to the nearest consoles, examining them closely under the stark illumination of her flashlight.

“What are you looking for?” O’Neill asked, the click-clack of his crutches stopping over the other side of the console. “The on button?”

Sam glanced up. “Something like that,” she admitted, before turning back to her examination. “This place clearly still has some power. The DHD is different and not nearly as bulky as what we’re used to, so I’m hoping it runs off the power here rather having it’s own.”

“Why?” he asked simply.

“Because,” she said, punctuating it by tapping and pressing the larger push buttons along the breadth of the console, “if it is, this place still has power. Enough power to run the Stargate, which I’m betting is enough to make the doors work.”

“Forget the doors,” O’Neill grimaced, looking around the room. Some of the walls had a faint sparkling sheen in places where tiny ice crystals had formed. “Find a way to turn on the heat.”

Carter huffed a strained laugh as the console failed to respond to anything she did. “Yeah,” she said, voice cracking on the word. “That would be nice.”

O’Neill turned his head to look at her. “Captain?” he asked steadily, an unspoken question.

Carter took a deep breath, feeling the cold abrade the interior of her lungs. “Sorry, sir,” she said, letting the breath out so slowly the warmed air was barely visible as it passed out between her lips and into the cold of the room. “It’s been a long day.”

“You’re telling me,” O’Neill agreed, and for a moment the barrier between commanding officer and subordinate dropped, letting them commiserate together. O’Neill shifted on his crutches, turning the line of his body around to face her. “So,” he said, and the barrier was back up. “If we get the power back on, then what?”

Carter moved to the next console, pressing every button she could in hope of a reaction. “Well, I’m hoping the doors will open.”

“Just turning the power on will do that?” he asked skeptically.

Carter came to the end of the console without any luck and dropped her head. “I don’t know, sir,” she said, putting the heavy flashlight onto the console and just pressing at buttons with both hands. “But nothing I do seems to -” She pressed and held down the largest control, body tense and putting her whole weight down on the simple hexagonal button, then she pulled off with a frustrated cry. “Work!”

“Carter!” O’Neill snapped, and she startled. Then she winced, shame twisting her face into a quiet embarrassment.

“Sorry, sir,” she almost whispered, then lifted her arms in a helpless gesture. “I just can’t make it work.”

O’Neill shifted his right crutch, and reached over the console to lay a hand on the handle of the flashlight. “Take it slow, Carter,” he said. “I’ll hold the light. Just make sure you don’t miss any buttons.” He lifted the flashlight and awkwardly abandoned his left crutch to hold onto the back of the console for support.

The whole surface lit up with a quiet but almost chiming electric noise, the the keys backlit by orange light and crisp whites.

There was a moment of utter silence, then suddenly the entire room came to life. The pillars around the room activated with a low thrum, the crystal set into them casting a warm neutral glow that didn’t account for the gentle light that grew from nothing to encompass the entire room. Both O’Neill and Carter were forced to raise their arms and hide their eyes from the sudden light.

Carter risked lowering her arm first, squinting against their sudden removal from the dark isolation their eyes had long since adjusted to. All the consoles were active, and previously dark panes of crystal were displaying descending lines of almost ephemeral script.

“What happened?” O’Neill asked, raising his head up from the protective crook of his arm, the flashlight abandoned on the console.

Carter looked around, then down at O’Neill’s gloved hand holding onto the console. “I think you did,” she said slowly. “Sir, move your hand.” He did, although he just slid it along as far as he could without losing his balance. But there was nothing where he had been holding. “I don’t understand,” she said. “You must have tripped some kind of mechanism, some sort of trigger. But I don’t see anything.”

“Maybe it just likes me.” O’Neill said, still squinting and tone suggesting he really didn’t care why, so long as it was working. “Do the doors work?”

Carter straightened and looked at one of the nearby doors, hurrying over to it. Beside it was a raised panel of crystal, the three inserts lit by a gentle blue light. Considering carefully, she touched the top one with her fingertips. Nothing happened, and she checked the other two the same way. No response, but as she moved between the crystals but she could almost feel something odd against her hand, like a kind of tactile feedback. She carefully waved her hand through that feeling, and the crystals chimed. The door, however, did not open.

“Carter?” She glanced up at the Colonel’s careful tone, then slowly straightened. The displays had changed. Where before they had showed the alien language there was now some kind of status display or map, top and side views of some kind of structure. Sections were sequentially flashing with blue light, like it was...counting. Or…

“It’s some kind of status check,” she said, going with her gut. “The whole complex must be coming online.”

“Complex?” O’Neill asked pointedly. “I thought it was a tower.”

“Looking at this, there’s a hell of lot more down here than just a tower,” she replied, eyes skirting along the side view of the structure, the almost tiny lines up from a thick base. Lines like buildings...towers. Her eyes strayed to the very center, where one ascended above the rest. If that scale was even remotely accurate, the entire facility was kilometers across. No, tens of kilometers. All under the ice, stretching out in every direction.

The display finished its counting, and the entire schematic flashed blue with an almost cheerful chime. Noise erupted behind her and Carter spun back around to the door with a hand on her weapon as it opened, ancient motors pulling the two halves of the door apart and revealing the way into a lit corridor.

O’Neill carefully reached for the flashlight and turned it off. The click and slight change in the illumination of the room prompted Carter to focus again. “I guess the doors are working,” she said, still a little shocked by the sudden changes. “I just don’t know why.”

“Does it matter?” O’Neill asked.

Carter struggled for a moment. “Guess not,” she said reluctantly, looking around the room again. “We should let Major Castleman know we’ve made progress. Rescue teams might be able to get down into here from outside now.”

O’Neill stepped back from the console, finally letting go. Nothing shut off, and Carter let out a silent breath of relief. “Dial her up, Captain.”

“Yes sir,” she agreed, already moving to the DHD. It took her a moment to remember what planet Castleman had dialed in from and the stargate address associated with its designation, but she had a good memory. She paused a moment when a display of the gateroom came up in the center of the console the miniature DHD dial was mounted on when she activated the first symbol, but the rest of the glyphs came quickly after. The Stargate locked and activated, the noise audible. More importantly, the display showed a distinct difference from the last time they dialed out.

The shield over the Stargate was off.


	5. Serpent's Lair 1

From there things moved with uncharacteristic rapidity. The lights coming on and doors opening was only the start, as the slowly increasing temperature attested. While it would be some hours before either felt comfortable shedding the thick winter gear that the SGC had been able to scrounge on short notice the tower was nonetheless beginning to cultivate a habitable condition.

Unfortunately those who would have able to intuitively navigate the now available control systems or, indeed, something as basic as the matter-transport relays, had not been in residence for several million years. While Captain Carter could appreciate the technological advancement involved in technology which could remain functional for the tens of thousands of years of deep freeze, as well as the vast scale of the complex beneath their feet, she as of yet had no conception of precisely how advanced that was.

Colonel O’Neill, whose touch and genetics had provided the key for the city waking, would have been happy leaving as soon as was humanly possible. As it was the only reason that both he and Carter had not left through the Stargate was the risk that someone unfriendly would dial Earth and come right out the open door.

Atlantis had never been put to sleep, not truly, not like her smaller namesake had. Consoles had never been covered with dust sheets or systems shut down. She had endured a long isolation, true, but it was with a measured level of power thrumming through solid crystal that sported architecture more akin to expressed mathematical formulae than the circuit boards in the SGC supercomputers. The quarantine shield and structural integrity field had patiently channeled the energy allocated to them without so much as changing the temperature of the emitters, let alone producing any wear on the components. Perhaps if the primary shield had been raised and ready to shrug off orbital bombardment for four million years straight it would have been a different story.

But it wasn’t. Atlantis was pristine. All the core systems, especially the power conduits, had been exhaustively serviced and improved during the installation of the stardrive. As the last vestiges of the infected population had breathed their last, lights and temperature regulation systems had shut down for lack of any to use them. Water pumps and purification engines had ceased their vital functions. But now it was all coming alive again. Air circulated through stale-aired sublevels, and heating elements deep in the superstructure gently warmed it before it ascended the interiors of the ten thousand towers.

Slowly, subtly, and bottom first, the ice that entombed the city began to thaw.

The rescue helicopter dispatched from McMurdo saw none of this. It would take weeks before the signs of melt where the tower met the ice was spotted, the chilly weather refreezing what water appeared into an increasingly smooth border about the edges of the structure. Weeks again before it was confirmed that the same was happening deep in the Ross Ice Shelf nearer the colossal superstructure. It was only a matter of time before the city was free.

But that, concerning as it would become in later months, was rather relegated to the back of the SGC’s mind when two things happened: first, Daniel Jackson tumbled through the looking glass; and second, Senator Kinsey paid a visit to Stargate Command.

 

Daniel looked up from work as the rap of knuckles against his open door announced Jack O’Neill. Notice duly given the military man sauntered in, glancing at the papers and photos scattered across the work surface that dominated the center of the repurposed room. “Busy?” O’Neill asked casually, lifting one of the photos to take a look. It was a picture of the totemic warning on that graveyard planet, left by the Jaffa to signify that it had been destroyed by the Goa’uld and was uninhabitable. “Working on this stuff, huh?”

Daniel leaned forward, playing with his pen. “Well, there’s not much else to do, and it seems pretty clear that the people of that world visited some other planets through the Stargate, so there’s a pretty disparate collection of artifacts like - please don’t touch that.”

O’Neill tilted his head and gave the alien device a careful look before slowly lowering it back down and giving it a nod. “What’s that?”

Daniel leaned over and carefully retrieved the piece of technology, scooting it over to his side of the workspace. “That’s what turned on that mirror I told you about,” he said. “There’s some markings on it that seems more like symbolic representations than any kind of language, but there might be some inferences to me made from…” Daniel trailed off as O’Neill looked around. “Jack, why are you here? I mean, you’re not really interested in any of the translation work, so…

“Oh,” O’Neill replied, sounding bored. “Just surprised you weren’t working on that language from the meaning of life place.”

That took Daniel aback, as he couldn’t think of any real reason why he would be. “Well,” he said slowly. “There’s only so much you can do with short samples, and without being able to assign sounds to the symbols -” He refocused. “Jack, why are you here?”

The colonel stuck his hands into the pockets of his off-duty fatigues. “Hammond called a meeting. We’ve got some Senator coming in from Washington and he wanted SG-1 there.”

“What for?” Daniel asked.

“Well, we’re the flagship team.” O’Neill shrugged. “Maybe he just wants a view from the other side of the Gate.”

 

Senator Kinsey did not want a view from the other side of the Gate. He had in fact opened with the announcement that unless the meeting changed his mind he was going to shut the Stargate for good, something that provoked varying levels of hostility. Teal’c and Daniel both had things they needed offworld, one to fight the Goa’uld and the other to save his wife. Carter looked like she’d been sucker punched for a second at the prospect of losing the possibilities the Stargate offered. O’Neill took it the best, which wasn’t very well at all.

“Gentlemen,” Kinsey said, sighing slightly as though he was exasperated they hadn’t grasped the point yet. O’Neill barely avoided clenching his jaw at how the politician oozed arrogant smarm. “We need to look at the facts.” He spread his hands expansively. “The Stargate program is a seven billion dollar black hole. It was established without an overarching mandate and without proper oversight, and when that oversight was provided by the Pentagon it continually took unacceptable risks with the future of this planet.”

The reactions down the length of the briefing room table were varied. O’Neill had gone still, a sort of dangerous glint in his eye. Carter had closed her eyes as if she’d just been told something painful. Teal’c looked impassive and otherwise undisturbed. Daniel had become positively agitated, looking as if he wasn’t sure quite where to start his rebuttal, and General Hammond at the other end looked coldly angry.

“With all respect, Senator,” Hammond replied, “The SGC has upheld the best principles of the United States and humanity in the galaxy at large.”

“Even when it meant disobeying orders,” Kinsey remarked acerbically. He shook his head as if he was disappointed, not looking at anyone. “Trust me, that...debacle with the Tollan nearly shut this facility down.” He leaned forward. “If you hadn’t had me on side, it would have.”

O’Neill asked his question in the most insolent manner possible, the immediately obvious indication that he had zero respect for whoever he was talking to. “And...what exactly do you do again?”

“Senator Kinsey chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee,” Hammond answered quietly. “He will be making a recommendation to the President about the future of the Stargate Program.”

Kinsey smiled in that faintly smug way of a man who had his authority confirmed. “So,” he said. “Convince me. Show me one reason the Stargate should stay open.”

Carter shook her head. “The possibilities that we’d lose by closing the Gate are enormous. The technology we’ve seen out there-”

“Is worth risking the destruction of the planet?” Kinsey interrupted. “What have you accomplished? Multiple infiltrations of this facility by alien forces. Attempted assaults. Personally earning the enmity of alien warlords.”

“The technology we can find-” Carter tried.

“Like the technology the Tollan had?” Kinsey said pointedly. “Technology and sources of information that would have revolutionised this country? That technology?” He shook his head again. “Fortunately with the Antarctic base we don’t need the Stargate any more. What will happen the next time you stumble across a hostile alien power? No. The Stargate needs be closed. For good this time.”

That rather set the attitude for the next of the meeting. Kinsey wasn’t interested in cultural or historical value, just hard results, and nothing Daniel said could sway him. Nor was he interested in the plight of the Jaffa. Within half an hour of frustrated debate it was clear to everyone there that the decision was made before the senator had even sat down at the table.

The recess for Kinsey to get some lunch was gratefully received. “I can’t believe they’re just going to shut down the Stargate,” Carter said indignantly. “After everything that’s happened.”

“The Goa’uld have already been made aware of this world,” Teal’c rumbled. “Burying the Stargate will not stop them.”

“We know that, Teal’c,” Hammond said tiredly. “They don’t.”

Daniel pushed back his chair a little to distance himself from the table. “Guys,” he said carefully, and his odd tone of voice attracted the attention of the others. “Is there something I should know about Antarctica?”

There was a pause. “Like what?” O’Neill asked, sounding confused.

“Oh, I don’t know!” Daniel snapped, hackles up now. “Like -” The Stargate thunked as the first chevron activated, and the base alarms wailed to life.

“Unscheduled off-world activation!” Walter’s voice rang out over the base loudspeakers. “Defense teams to the gate room!”

The brewing argument stopped cold as the entire team hurried down the stairs into the control room, General Hammond just behind them. The Stargate activated, the unstable vortex neutralised by the shut iris.

“Receiving IDC,” Walter announced. “It’s…” He paused. “SG-1, sir.”

“Hello,” O’Neill said.

“That’s not possible,” Carter added. “Nobody else should have those codes.”

Hammond leaned forward to the microphone. “Defense teams, stand by.” He looked to Walter and nodded sharply. “Open the iris.”

There was the loud sound of sliding metal on sliding metal as the iris opened, the overlapping plates of the ultra-thin titanium opening like a camera shutter. The event horizon was laid bare, a gently rippling surface of blue light. Then Daniel Jackson stepped through and onto the ramp, hands up. “Don’t shoot!” he said. “It’s me!”

There was a moment of stunned silence, then Hammond reached for the mic. “Identify yourself!” he ordered sharply.

“Ah,” Daniel laughed nervously, waving his hands a little from where he was holding them up. “It’s just me. Daniel Jackson.” The Stargate shut down behind him. “There’s...been a mixup. I’m meant to be here.”

Everyone in the control glanced at their Jackson, who looked as surprised as the rest of them. “Don’t look at me,” he said. “I don’t know.”

“Look I know everyone is really suspicious right now,” the Daniel on the ramp said. “But I’m not a Goa’uld or an alien or anything. There’s this...this mirror on P3R-233, okay? I touched it and it transported me to an alternate reality. I only just came back.”

“What’s he talking about?” Hammond demanded quietly. “Is that possible?”

Carter gaped. “It’s...I mean, it’s possible according to quantum theory, but there’s no evidence it actually exists.”

“Look,” the Daniel on the ramp said, still staring down the guns with his hands up. “I know we’d all like to take a while to talk this over, but it’s urgent. The other reality is different to ours, but not much. Sam and Jack just got stuck on a glacier there - the Antarctic complex doesn’t exist. But right now it’s under attack by the Goa’uld.”


	6. Serpent's Lair 2

“The first thing I noticed was that some of my notes were in the wrong place,” Daniel explained, sitting alone on one side of the table while SG-1 sat the other. “Of course, that was after we’d gated back home.” He glanced towards his doppelganger. The other Daniel was standing by the observation window down into the gateroom and looking pensive. Hammond, meanwhile, sat at his customary place at the head of the table. The only sign of increased security was the pair of soldiers flanking the entrance, both fully armed.

“We actually buying this?” O’Neill asked, looking bored. “Because I’m not.”

Carter pursed her lips. “It is...technically possible,” she allowed. “We’ve seen plenty of incredible things.”

Hammond frowned. “I trust it took more than that to convince you that reality had changed around you,” he prompted. “What if someone else had just gone through your notes?”

“That was my first thought,” Daniel admitted. “But I couldn’t find any of my translation efforts for the Antarctic language, or the preliminary photography. When I complained about it to Sam she had no idea what I was talking about which...struck me as a little weird.” He paused a moment. “I didn’t press at the time, especially when it turned out the SGC was being threatened with closure.”

O’Neill straightened up in his seat. “Fancy that,” he said, glancing at Hammond. For the first time since the conversation began he dropped the uninterested act. “What then?”

“Then the Goa’uld attacked,” Daniel said simply. “Two ships were picked up passing Jupiter. Flying pyramids.”

“Like Ra?” Sam confirmed.

“No, they actually looked different,” Daniel said. “Like the pyramid had been built around. We never knew if Ra had weapons on his pyramid ship, but these did. Of course we didn’t wait until they started shooting to try and take them out.”

“Okay,” O’Neill said. “Let’s say, for the sake of argument,” he tilted his pen towards Daniel. “That we believe you.” He paused a moment. “How did we do that?”

“Some kind of nuclear missile,” Daniel replied. “Enhanced with the gate element and radar-blocking skin. Apparently it would be like a billion tons of TNT going off.”

“That’s…” Carter hesitated. “That’s insane. Not just the yield but we don’t know what kind of sensor package the Goa’uld use. For all we know they use something much more advanced than radar.”

“Yeah, well it didn’t do much good,” Daniel said bitterly. “The ships had some kind of energy shield, like the one Apophis used back on the Nox planet. It didn’t even make a scratch. Just like that the military sort of...gave up.”

O’Neill turned in his seat. “General?” he asked. “We got any of those missiles?”

“I have no idea,” Hammond replied. “Once the naquadah leaves this facility I receive no more information.” The general thought for a long moment. “I’ll make enquiries,” he decided. “If nothing else, it will support Doctor Jackson’s story.”

“I wouldn’t bother,” the other Daniel said, turning around. “It makes sense. Why I didn’t know anything about this Antarctic discovery, why Jack thought I would be working on that instead of the artifacts from 233.”

“You’re saying you believe him?” O’Neill asked.

“I’m saying it’s possible,” Daniel corrected. “But it would definitely explain why things have been subtly off ever since I touched the mirror. I would have thought of time travel sooner than alternate realities, though. But something as weird as the mirror seems like it would be a definite thing to focus on, whatever had changed about the world.” He turned to his doppelganger. “You said that Earth was under attack, not that the Goa’uld were there.”

Daniel was uncharacteristically silent for a moment. When he finally spoke, it like the words were being dragged out of him. “After the missiles didn’t work, the ships started shooting. When I left casualties were estimated at ten million and rising.”

“Jesus,” Carter breathed. “How long was this?”

“Four, five hours,” Daniel said. “New York and Boston.” He looked down at his hands. “Evacuations started to a backup site offworld, and when Hammond shut down my attempt to go back to 223 I went with one of the groups then dialed out from there.”

“You just _left_?” O’Neill asked.

“What was I meant to do?” Daniel asked. “I was hoping that I was in some kind of simulation. That I was under the influence of some alien technology. I went so fast to the mirror that I knocked over one of the artifacts. When I touched the mirror again and it was showing where I’d just been, disturbances and all, I knew that it was a different place all together..”

“You keep calling it a mirror,” Sam said. “Why is that?”

“Through the looking glass,” both Daniels said simultaneously, prompting them to share a look.

Hammond chose this point to interrupt. “So what do you propose we do?” he asked. “It seems to me that the situation is already untenable.”

“Maybe it is,” Daniel admitted. “But if it was me in this situation, and it is…” he glanced at his counterpart. “I wouldn’t want to be somewhere else while it was happening.”

 

The electric sensation of the mirror washed over Daniel, and suddenly the rest of SG-1 wasn’t standing beside him. Instead they were on the other side of the mirror, looking through at him. By his feet were a few scattered artifacts knocked over by the other Daniel. On the other side Sam said something, but lip reading had never been one of his strong suits, the soundless and slightly distorted image sending a shiver down his spine. He gave them a long look, then turned away and exited the room. The DHD was only a few meters away, silently beckoning to him.

The constellations came with easy practice, but more slowly than usual. He could be going to his death. What could one archeologist to against two Goa’uld spaceships? Ships that all the militaries of the world couldn’t deal with? Sam wouldn’t have given up. Jack wouldn’t have given up. If the Goa’uld didn’t know where the Stargate was there was still hope they could do...something. He was part of the team, and he belonged there.

The stargate roared to life, event horizon surging outwards in the unstable vortex before being drawn back into the puddle. Daniel tugged up his sleeve and entered the SG-1 iris code on his GDO, waited until he received the ‘signal sent’ confirmation on the tiny screen, then silently made a count of ten. Then he stepped through.

His dissociated molecules were incapable of feeling or seeing anything as they hurtled down the wormhole, but there was always the sensation of stars shooting past and the sudden surge of light and awareness as he stepped through the puddle on the other side. But not into the SGC, with its spartan grey walls and metal ramp. Gold coated the walls, lit by braziers of fire in the Egyptian style. Solid black granite was beneath his feet, the Stargate disengaging with a loud thwump behind him.

Shock washed over him, staring at his surroundings. Hieroglyphics both familiar and foreign were carved into the gold plated walls, crates were strewn around the chamber he found himself in, all marked with the same symbol that was branded on Teal’c’s forehead. This place belong to Apophis. There was a huge entrance, some kind of door retracted into the walls to reveal a slightly curving corridor outside. So far as he could tell that was the only way out. His mind spun to life. This place belonged to Apophis and it had Earth’s stargate address. The attack had only begun less than a day ago, they couldn’t have landed and built a temple so quickly, so he must be -

That thought sent a spike of adrenaline through him that had his eyes instinctively flying to the nearby DHD. But before he could step over to the DHD to dial out, the loud clanking footsteps of heavily armoured Jaffa echoed up the corridor towards the room he was in. Looking about for cover, Daniel went for the most solid looking piece he could find among all the crates - the platform of the Stargate itself. The solid hewn granite was big enough to obscure him completely when he was crouched down behind it, but it didn’t stop him trembling with adrenaline. By the time he thought to unholster his pistol the Jaffa had entered the room and might hear him pull it free.

The marching stopped. What were they waiting for? The grinding of the Stargate’s inner ring answered that question, the chevrons engaging one after another. The moment the gate opened Daniel lifted his head up looked over the edge of the platform, looking through the rear of the event horizon, the somewhat transparent view from his side letting him see the nine Serpent Guards standing at attention, with four each side of the Stargate and the ninth by the DHD.

The gate disgorged its travellers with a wet squelch, and Daniel’s heart skipped a beat as he recognised the helmets on these Jaffa as the same he saw on Abydos, almost three years ago. The Horus guard of Ra. Then a figure in golden armor stepped through the center of the gate, but the start of the wormhole disengaging forced Daniel to duck his head back down behind the platform and out of sight before he could see anything more specific.

“Greetings,” a voice said, one Daniel reckoned belonged to the Serpent Guard furthest from the gate. “Mighty Heru’ur. Lord Klorel invites you to witness the destruction of the First World at his hands.”

Daniel’s jaw clenched. Klorel. _Skarra._

“Does Apophis not pay respect to a fellow System Lord?” a gravelly voice interrogated, the resonant tones of the Goa’uld filling the room. “Am I to be insulted by audience with his son?”

“Lord Klorel apologizes,” the Jaffa replied, and the slight shift of chainmail made Daniel think he was bowing. “All will be explained at the pel’tak.”

There was a moment of silence, a dangerous tension in the air. Then Heru’ur laughed, a low and sneering chuckle. “Very well. I see the intent of your lord - I shall entertain his offer. Bring me to him.”

Some barked commands in Goa’uld later the Jaffa were leaving, marching out of the chamber in a synchronized stamping of feet. When their footsteps faded away, Daniel slowly stood up, made sure there was nobody left, and sprinted for the DHD.

 

O’Neill flicked the red protector for the firing switch of his inactive detonator up and down, the click-clack filling the silence left by their vigil over the ‘quantum mirror’ as Carter was calling it. She’d been stalking around with monitoring equipment and radiation sensors for over an hour, trying to gather as much data as they could. He had been resisting the urge to slap his C4 onto it, set a timer, and leave. Teal’c was staring at the Stargate, stoically contemplating whatever it was the Jaffa contemplated while they were on watch.

“Sir,” Carter said. “Look.”

He looked. Through the mirror he could see the blue wash of light on the doorframe of the nearly identical room on the other side. The Stargate was on again. The light had barely disappeared when a rather harried looking Daniel came into view and jogged to the mirror. O’Neill slipped the detonator into his vest as Daniel reached for the mirror and in a wave of blue electric light was suddenly standing in the room with them.

“Guys,” Daniel said breathlessly. “I - need a bomb.”

"A bomb?" O'Neill repeated.

"What kind of bomb?" Carter asked.

"Uh, a nuke would be good," Daniel said. "Really good."

"A _nuke_?" O'Neill repeated.


	7. Serpent's Lair 3

When the Chappa’ai roared with its magic and opened the gate to other worlds, the Jaffa on guard instantly lowered their staff weapons at the puddle of standing water. After the departure of Lord Klorel’s guest a watch had been set to ensure that there was no treachery or deception. More than a dozen Jaffa were ready to throw back any attempted invasion of the ship.

The Chappa’ai spat out a long box of silvered grey, slid out across the floor and almost tipping down the stairs of the mounted dais. When the other end emerged the magic ended, and only the strange delivery remained. There was a long pause of uncertainty. Was this some new tribute, or perhaps a strange weapon?

“Send word to Lord Klorel,” their senior ordered. “Some strange thing has come through-”

The sentence was unfinished, the shockwave of radiation emanating from such close quarters killing them in gruesome ways that the slow and limited mechanisms of their body hadn’t the time to sense, much less process. Ionising radiation tore the electrons off their constituent atoms, and the new and inimicable to life chemistry their body would have otherwise assumed in the following seconds had not begun to form before the radiative transfer of heat propelled their disintegrating molecules apart to be swept up in the blastwave of overpressure. Walls reinforced with crude naquadah buckled and ablated into fine gas, the entire ship being torn apart in an expanding sphere.

The explosion reached the main reactor, the stocks of refined naquadah woven into the mechanisms torn from their shielding by the force of the detonation. Exposed to the soup of high energy radiation in the reactor chamber and the nuclear explosion, they liberated all the energy inherent to their element in one cataclysmic blast. The second nuclear blast instantly and utterly outshadowed the Mark III warhead, the characteristic blue wash of naquadah-enhanced weaponry simply wiping Klorel’s Hatak from existence. The radiation front reached Apophis’ shields almost instantly, the orange glow of the defense screen flaring into the visible spectrum.

The glow vanished after just a split-second, and the blue radiance washed over the second Goa’uld mothership. It didn’t even leave behind debris.

 

After a long twenty four hours of watching over the mirror, supervising the deployment of a nuclear weapon into an alternate reality, and seeing Daniel off back home to a safe if greatly changed Earth, SG-1 finally stepped through the Stargate and back into the SGC.

They emerged into a forest of pointed guns, almost triple the number of usual airmen with their weapons trained on the open Gate, and welding equipment was discarded by the base of the Stargate. The intercom crackled. “Stand down,” Hammond ordered, and the small army crammed into the gateroom lowered their weapons. Moments later the blast door into corridor A buzzed and opened. “Welcome back, SG-1,” the general said as he walked in. “Was your mission successful?”

“One Goa’uld ship blows up,” O’Neill said, lifting a hand. “Another Goa’uld ship blows up,” he lifted the other. “The day is saved.” He lowered them again. “We saw Daniel through the gate and came back home.”

“And this...mirror device?” Hammond asked.

“It is destroyed,” Teal’c said. “I do not believe it can be used again.”

“Blew the top off with a chunk of C4,” O’Neill elaborated. “Doubt it can work with the top half missing.”

Hammond nodded. “Well done,” he said. “We’ll debrief in one hour.”

“Ah, sir,” Carter interrupted. “What’s going on?” She nodded at the welding equipment. “Is the iris malfunctioning?”

“Not exactly, Captain,” Hammond replied. “While you were off-world or…” he struggled for a moment. “In the other world,” he settled for, “the meetings with Senator Kinsey concluded. He finalised his recommendation to the President that the SGC be shut down with immediate effect. The iris is being reconfigured so that it prevents the formation of an active wormhole when closed.”

“Sir,” O’Neill said. “Is it really a great idea to do that? We literally just heard what could happen if we sit around and wait for the Goa’uld to come to us.”

“We don’t have a choice,” Hammond said simply. “We have orders, and we follow them. For the moment the iris will have to suffice. I have raised the possibility with the President that the Stargate can be used to relay personnel and supplies from the continental United States to the Antarctic complex. If he accepts the Stargate will remain in place, only active when the iris is open. If he does not, this silo will be filled with concrete.”

“That would be mistake,” Teal’c said simply. “The Goa’uld will not forget the people of the Tau’ri because the Stargate is buried.”

“Especially now we know it’s possible for them to attack with motherships,” Carter added. “Motherships our weapons aren’t effective against.”

“You aren’t the only one who thinks so, Captain,” Hammond replied. “I will be bringing this incident up with the President and the potential implications. But for now all we can do is buy time.” He glanced between them. “Teal’c, I know that if we fail you will want to go through the Stargate. I will do everything in my power to see that happen if we can’t keep the gate open.”

The Jaffa inclined his head in silent thanks. The General glanced between them, seeing there were no further questions. He took a step back and swung out an arm to usher them off the ramp. “Debriefing in one hour.”

 

Despite their best efforts in relaying the threat posed by the Goa’uld, especially now they had a demonstration of exactly what they could do to Earth given the chance, the decision had already been made. Testimony from an experience that seemed dubious to even the more accepting mind of Captain Carter, who had passed through the mirror while helping deploy the bomb, did not find fertile ground in the minds of either Senator Kinsey or the Pentagon.

Fortunately the President had not proven as unreceptive to the idea of using the SGC Stargate to securely transit between the USA and Antarctica, and a week later the Stargate’s new iris retracted, clearing the space reserved for the event horizon. Seconds later the final symbol of the dialing sequence for the Alpha Site locked, the Ancient device boring a wormhole five thousand light years rimward.

“Alpha Site confirms disembarkation area secure,” Sergeant Harriman reported. “Stargate dialing sequence completed 1204 Zulu.”

“Good,” General Hammond said, and leaned forward to the microphone. “You are clear to proceed. The Antarctic Stargate will be opened at 1230 Zulu. If you do not establish a connection within five minutes, you will be stranded. Is that understood?”

“Loud and clear,” O’Neill muttered. He checked his MP5 for a second time, watching as the dozens of personnel holding storage crates between them passed through the Stargate.

“You alright, sir?” Carter asked, glancing at him. The two members of SG-1 would be bringing up the rearguard for the shipment. The Colonel’s mood had become increasingly sour over the last few days, especially when he was informed his presence had been requested by the research teams in Antarctica. Carter, of course, had volunteered to get her own look at the buried city under better conditions.

“I don’t like Antarctica, Captain” O’Neill replied, a touch acerbically. “It’s cold.”

“From what I understand the temperature is much better now, sir,” she said. “And we might need you.”

“You see, I don’t get that,” he complained. “What, if all the eggheads can’t figure out a way to turn things on, what good am I going to do?”

“The power only came on when you touched the console,” Carter reminded him. “Now that might have just been a one time thing, possibly because you were the first through the Stargate, but from what I hear there are a lot of systems that just won’t turn on.” She shrugged. “The hope is you can help with that.”

“Maybe they’re just broken,” O’Neill muttered, putting on a pair of sunglasses as the last of the supplies were carried through the Stargate and mounting the ramp to follow. “Who knows how long they’ve been sitting there.”

Carter chose not to respond, and they stepped through the gate. Just over twenty minutes later, on the dot, they stepped back through to Earth - just on a different continent.

“Colonel O’Neill, Captain Carter!” The moment they were through a man was waving them aside from the convoy of supplies. “Major Reynolds, NID.” He gave O’Neill a crisp salute.

“Reynolds,” O’Neill greeted, returning the salute. “Who did you piss off to get assigned here?”

“Oh, no one at all,” Reynolds said with painful earnestness. “I’m on secondment from Groom Lake.”

“Area 51, huh?” O’Neill asked.

“Yes sir,” Reynolds confirmed. “I thought I’d seen it all. But it’s been an adventure and a half just securing the main tower, let alone the rest of the structure. Yesterday we think we found some kind of music chamber. That or someone left a tape in the stereo. Like no music you’ve ever heard.” He stepped back. “This way, please. Doctor Thompson is eager to get started.”

Without much ado (aside from a conversation about how thrilled he was to meet them, and that he was a big fan of Doctor Jackson’s ‘meaning of life stuff’ when he’d been supervising security at Area 51) they were led down several levels, to be greeted next to a dark console by the Doctor. Reynolds promptly handed them off and returned upstairs to supervise the distribution of supplies and personnel. To O’Neill’s dismay the console lit up at his touch and he was dragged along on a whirlwind tour of the tower, descending downwards over the span of an hour.

“Alright, that’s enough.” O’Neill threw up his hands as they came to stop by another door. “Why is this stuff only working around me? Carter?”

“Well, you already heard my theory that it was because you were first through the Stargate,” she offered. “But it might be something about you. Maybe you’re the same height and weight as somebody authorised to turn this stuff on, or it might just be that it’s a system malfunction.” She shrugged apologetically. “Sorry sir.”

“I swear,” O’Neill threatened. “If I see one more turned off, identical looking desk, I’m going to do something drastic.”

“Console,” Doctor Thompson corrected. “But we’re coming to the crown jewel of our collection.” He waved a hand over a door panel, which opened to admit them into a hexagonal room. Right in the center, surrounded by no less than four of the consoles, was a chair. Although the term ‘throne’ might have been more accurate.

“I am not sitting in that,” O’Neill declared immediately. “I refuse to sit in the creepy, giant alien chair.” He glanced at Thompson’s expression, which was largely exasperated. “This is where I draw the line. Captain, back me up here.”

“I hate to say it, sir,” Carter said, “but so far we haven’t seen any indication that this technology is dangerous.”

“Yet,” he replied, lifting a finger. “Yet.”

“You don’t have to press any buttons, sir,” she said. “Nobody is until we have a working translation or understanding of what things are.”

“Although we have had promising progress on that front from Doctor Jackson,” Thompson added helpfully. “So far we’ve determined it’s a base ten numeral system, and an alphabetical language with twenty four letters. Apparently he is following some promising leads.”

“Either way,” Carter added. “You just need to turn it on.”

There was a moment of silence, and O’Neill sighed. “Fine,” he surrendered. “I’ll sit in the creepy chair.” He stepped up onto the raised dais and nudged it with his foot. When it remained unresponsive, he carefully turned around and lowered himself into it. The dark crystal immediately sprung to life in a luminous, radiant blue. The chair reclined into a comfortable angle, and a hologram sprung into life above their heads.

“Woah,” Thompson said, looking at the blue outline of the complex above their heads, slowly rotating in place. “That’s something.”

“No kidding,” Carter agreed. “Holography with no halide plates, no visible projectors…”

“Captain,” O’Neill interrupted, sounding strained. “This good?”

“That should be fine - woah.” Carter took a step back as the hologram spun out to encompass the entire planet. “Sir, did you touch any of the controls? Try not to move. It looks like some sort of sensor system.”

“I’m not moving, Captain!” he snapped.

“What’s the point of this?” Thompson asked. “Some kind of near-space monitoring system?”

“Could be useful for picking up any Goa’uld motherships without relying on Deep Space Radar,” Carter observed. “Hang on sir, let me help you up.”

“Wait!” Thompson shouted, and Carter froze mid-movement, arm outstretched to help the Colonel out of the chair. “What’s that?”

Carter’s eyes darted around, then she slowly looked up. The hologram had changed again, but this time instead of a static image lazily rotating it was a sparse starfield with a red dot highlighted. There was was a dashed line stretching from the red indicator to the center of the starfield, a long number in the alien script ticking down beside it.

“Is that counting seconds?” Thompson asked.

“Not quite,” Carter said after a moment. “Slightly longer than a second. But if that is base ten, it hits zero in less than three hours.” Right before their eyes, the red dot bleeped and stepped forward on the map a fraction closer.

“Wait,” O’Neill said, in a rare leap of logic. “Is this thing listening to us?” He was still unnaturally still, but his eyes were focused on the map.

“I was just talking about detecting motherships,” Carter repeated slowly. “That’s when it picked this up.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s a Goa’uld mothership,” Thompson protested, though he sounded more like he was trying to convince himself. “For all we know that could be a comet!”

The image blurred, resolving into a fuzzy image of two ships, cast in silhouette green against a black background. Despite the image quality, the central shape of a pyramid was unmistakable.

“No,” Carter said distantly. “Those are definitely motherships.”


	8. Chapter 8

With that kind of potentially apocalyptic information in hand, they’d been able to get through to Cheyenne via video link within ten minutes. With an order to keep monitoring the approach while the warning was passed up the chain of command (or, more accurately, to the President and then back down again) O’Neill was once against reluctantly sitting in the alien chair.

“Wait, what was that?” Carter said. The projected hologram above the now lazily rotating control chair had shifted from a long range scan of the motherships to a projection of an entirely different solar system. Above one of the planets there was a seven symbol Stargate address. “That’s Chulak’s address and their point of origin.”

O’Neill was staring up at the display in surprise. “I was just wondering where the ships came from.”

There was a pregnant pause as Carter absorbed this. “Sir…” she ventured. “I think this technology might be responding to your thoughts.”

The hologram went dark at the same time as the chair. “Forget that,” he said. “I’m not letting this thing read my mind.”

“Well,” Carter responded diplomatically. “It’s probably not anything quite as complex as mind reading. It might just be picking up on the things you subvocalize.”

“Subvocalize?” O’Neill repeated skeptically.

“Things you think out loud but don’t say,” she explained. “There’s actually some pretty interesting research going on in the field.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” he said a touch sardonically. “But I think I’m done sitting in the mind reading chair.”

Whatever Carter was going to say was cut off by their radios coming to life. “Colonel O’Neill and Captain Carter,” came the voice of Major Reynolds. “Please report to Stargate Control.”

 

“I’m sorry, you want to what?” O’Neill asked incredulously.

“It isn’t a matter of want, Colonel,” Hammond replied. “SGs one through five are ordered to report to the Alpha Site for an assault through the Stargate in line with the existing contingency plan drawn up based on information from Doctor Jackson.”

“And whose bright idea was it to make it an actual plan?” O’Neill asked.

Hammond shook his head. “That doesn’t matter. It is the view of the planners that in light of the observed poor cohesion of the Jaffa at the squad level and the inherent inaccuracy of their weaponry, this is a viable option.” Hammond explained. “In close quarters and with the element of surprise, it is felt that a reasonably small strike force has the potential to take the mothership.”

“Sir!” Carter protested. “Leaving aside the difficulty of attacking into a mothership with an unknown layout and defenses, close quarters makes staff weapons a hell of a lot more dangerous.”

Teal’c inclined his head from where he stood next to General Hammond, the videolink not quite capturing his entire upper body. “It is also foolhardy to believe that Apophis will bring any but his most seasoned warriors on a campaign of pacification,” he rumbled. “They will be expected to land and secure the Chappa’ai to prevent escape.”

“So in the event this deluded idea doesn’t work, what then?” O’Neill demanded.

“The strike team will carry a mark three nuclear warhead, set on a timer.” Hammond pursed his lips for a moment. “In the event the assault is repelled, the countdown will be accelerated or the bomb detonated manually.”

“So it’s a suicide mission,” O’Neill said. “Traditionally you ask for volunteers, don’t you?”

“In the event of heavy resistance you are expected to set the bomb on a short timer and evacuate back through the Stargate to the Alpha Site,” Hammond said. “But it is the feeling of the Joint Chiefs that the opportunity to take a fully functioning Goa’uld ship is too valuable to let slip by.”

“Tell me you don’t agree with this,” O’Neill asked. “Please.”

Hammond looked down for a moment, but the poor resolution of the video link hid anything more expressive. “We all have our orders, Colonel,” he said simply. “You are expected at the Alpha Site in less than an hour. I suggest you gate there now, in case the Goa’uld ship interferes with Stargate operations. Godspeed.” The screen went blank.

“Damn it,” O’Neill said under his breath, his fingers drumming along the stock of his MP5. But after a long moment he seemed to come to some conclusion and sighed glancing at Carter. “If you want to fall and break an ankle,” he said, “now is the time.”

“No sir,” she replied firmly. “I’m coming with you.”

“Yeah,” O’Neill muttered. “I was afraid you were going to say that.” He glanced at Major Reynolds, who was standing awkwardly nearby.

“Good luck, sir,” the man said quietly. “I’ll make sure the gate is dialed for you.”

 

Just an hour later, O’Neill watched the Alpha Site Stargate disengage, the last of the SG teams stepping through. He had seventeen men and women to take an alien mothership. This wasn’t his day. He stepped forward. “Alright, boys and girls,” he said, grabbing their attention. “This is the deal. We’ve been ordered to infiltrate and take control of one of those alien ships coming to invade Earth.”

He let that hang in the air for a moment. “Now, you might have noticed we’re short some people,” he nodded at SG-4 and SG-5. “That’s because we’re leaving the civilians out on this one. Chances are we’re going to be attacking into live fire and retreating under fire if things don’t go exactly according to plan.” He pointed at the heavy-duty wheeled cart sitting by the Stargate, the long oblong crate emblazoned with the black and yellow trefoil making clear what it carried. “That is a nuke. If things do go sideways, we bail out and set it off. No more snakeheads. Any questions?”

The Stargate painted the inside of the cargo bay in blue light, but nobody was there to see it. Crates marked with the symbol of Apophis lined the walls and free spaces, as well as racks of staff weapons by the walls. The MALP emerged from the event horizon with a wet squelch, half-driving and half-sliding down the stairs down from the event horizon. Coming to a stop, the camera panned around the room, taking in everything in the line of sight.

Ten seconds later, SG-1 stepped through the Stargate with weapons up, Carter and O’Neill both sweeping the room with the M4s they had been supplied with from the SGC. Teal’c was less wary, simply holding his staff ready and examining the area. Behind them more than a dozen more soldiers spilled from the gate, securing every nook and cranny of the cargo bay. When the gate shut down there was no obvious way out.

“Well,” Major Castleman said after several minutes of searching failed to come up with an exit. “This was a colossal waste of time.”

O’Neill made a non-committal noise. “Captain, found anything?”

“No, sir,” Carter said. “I think this wall is meant to open - it has a seam. But I can’t find any way to do that.”

“Explosives?” Castleman suggested.

“Rather just nuke it,” O’Neill said. “Set the bomb. Fifteen minutes.”

“O’Neill.” He looked up as Teal’c said his name. “I believe I have found a means to open the door.” There was a muted click as the jaffa twisted one of the hieroglyphics that seemed to occupy every square inch of the gold-plated walls, and suddenly the massive door slid open to slowly reveal and empty corridor that gently curved to the left.

“Warn us next time, will you?” Castleman asked. “Looks like the way it open, Colonel.”

“Yeah,” O’Neill agreed. “Looks that way.” He glanced around the room. “SG-3, guard our way out of here. Everyone else, let’s go.”

It quickly became apparent as they advanced that the ship was a maze, corridors and junctions splitting off into more corridors. Unless there were plenty of hidden doors, a lot of the ship was...corridor. “It makes sense that a ship this huge would be largely automated,” Carter speculated. “But if this is an invasion force you’d expect there to be plenty of jaffa.”

Right on cue, a voice suddenly boomed around them in Goa’uld, the resonating tone filling the corridors seemingly from thin air. Teal’c looked up. “It is an order to prepare for battle.”

There was a low electronic hum in the distance, accompanied by a door opening. Seconds after that, the distinctive sound of armored boots clanked down the corridor. “That’s it,” O’Neill said. “Everyone back to the gate. We’ll bring up the rear.”

No sooner than the words were out of his mouth then Jaffa appeared around the corner ahead. The hall erupted into shouting and gunfire as the strike force backed off, jaffa collapsing where they stood. But all element of surprise was totally lost, and enemy soldiers were suddenly spilling into the corridor ahead. Still being some distance away their attempt to attack the invaders was inaccurate at best, but it still forced SG-1 to drop back from cover to cover rather than backing away while firing. The rest of the strike-force hurried back and vanished through the junction, occasionally backing against the wall and letting off a few longer ranged shots in support.

With the last of their support vanished down the corridor, it turned into an exhausting exchange of suppressive fire, the highly accurate rifles and Teal’c skill with a staff weapon picking off any jaffa who dared to step out into the corridor proper. The leapfrogging back from cover to cover slowed, and it was a good two minutes before they were even halfway down to the junction and potential escape from the engagement. That was when the distant crack of automatic weapons reached them. O’Neill reached for his radio. “Castleman, report!”

The radio crackled to life with the sound of much closer gunfire. “Colonel, we’re having trouble holding the gate! SGs two, four, and five are clear. Just waiting on you, sir!”

“Well we’re having some trouble of our own here!” O’Neill snapped, then let go of his radio to pick off a pair of jaffa who tried to steal some distance. “How long do you think you can hold?” He waited a moment. “Castleman?”

“Maybe a minute?” There was a loud whump of staff fire hitting near the radio. “We’re cut off from the DHD. At least a dozen Jaffa advancing, and they’re in the room!”

Carter looked over. Her expression said it all, and then she refocused and fired a short burst down-range. The Jaffa were dwindling now, backing off from their frontal attack. Which meant they were probably repositioning. O’Neill’s fingers drummed against the radio as the staff blasts petered out, Teal’c ending the attempted assault on their position with a well aimed shot of his own. He pressed the talk button. “Major, get through the gate. That’s an order.”

“Yes sir - augh!” The radio cut into static. O’Neill stood up, clenching the radio. “Castleman!” he shouted into the radio, but there was no response. “Major, respond!” Again, nothing but static. He let go of the radio and lifted his rifle. “Right, show’s over. Back to the gate. Move!” He turned and started to run towards the junction they had passed through, only for a quartet of Jaffa to go running through from another corridor and turn towards them.

“Look out!” Carter shouted, throwing herself behind one of the slanted pillars that sloped into the wall, staff blasts roaring across the intervening space and striking the gold-plated obstacle she had taken cover behind. The pillar was left black and bare at the heart of the impact zone, cherry red at the edges and dribbling molten gold. O’Neill lifted his M4 and unloaded an entire magazine into the jaffa, who were just standing in the middle of the junction and firing from the hip. Sparks flew from the breastplates they wore, and they all went sprawling onto their backs. He lowered the rifle for a moment to make sure they weren’t moving.

“O’Neill!” Teal’c warned, and this time it was Jack who had to jerk himself into cover, this time over half a dozen jaffa coming from the opposite end of the corridor, staff weapons throwing inaccurate but lethal bolts of energized plasma down the length of the hallway. Even Teal’c didn’t dare to do more than turn his head slightly from behind his cover to observe the slow advance with his peripheral vision in the face of such continued fire.

“Damn it,” O’Neill muttered, reaching into his vest. “Grenades!” he warned, and less than a second later flung a pair of the green ‘pineapples’ out from cover with a risky underarm toss from behind cover. They clattered down the corridor and exploded with a deafening pair of cracks. The staff fire stopped instantly. He peeked out. “Okay,” he said. “That was excessive.” The closed confines had amplified the lethality of the grenades beyond his expectations, the shrapnel leaving long gouges in the gold of the walls. He reloaded his MP5 and stepped out from cover. “Let’s move,” he ordered. “We can’t let them reinforce the Gate before we get there.”

Despite that hope they were less than halfway back to the Stargate and less than a minute along before they encountered another group of six jaffa standing guard where the corridor branched off into some other chamber and then made a sharp corner towards the cargo bays. This time instead of standing and firing, the reaction of the jaffa was to take cover behind the pillars as well, staffs lined up in the direction SG1 had approached in. Seconds later a withering barrage of staff fire was pinning them in. The close quarters and two to one numbers disadvantage meant that even the staff weapons were effective at keeping them pinned down, accuracy aside.

“Carter!” O’Neill shouted. “If you’ve got any bright ideas, now is the time!”

“Grenades?” she shouted back.

“I’m all out!” he yelled. “There wasn’t exactly a planning session!” Then the colonel paused a second at how the cadence of the staff blasts had altered slightly. He ducked his head out for a second, only to jerk it back as a staff blast nearly took his head off. “They’re advancing!” he warned, the three closest Jaffa creeping up the corridor to the next pillar and drawing closer to the pinned team. “We’re going to have to do something! Count of three! One! Two-”

“Jaffa! Kree!” The enemy fire slackened for a moment as a voice from around the corner of corridor demanded their attention. Then the three jaffa by the bend startled and suddenly swung their staff weapons around to point at the source, but a volley of the golden plasma bolts accompanied by the loud concussive ‘wu-WHUMP’ sound of staff weapon fire struck them with unerring accuracy, their mail and protective armor incapable of preserving their lives in the face of anything but glancing hits. They were thrown backwards those few inches back to the bulkhead with flame-edged burns over their chests and weapons falling from nerveless fingers.

The three Jaffa who had positioned themselves further down from the corner and closer to the Tau’ri invaders were suddenly thrown into disarray. One attempted to turn his weapon back to face the new threat, only for the sudden inattention to expose them to rifle fire from Carter, who wasted no time in emerging from behind cover with her finger in the trigger. The other two simultaneously attempted to retreat and secure their rear by running in a crouch with heads down. Teal’c shot one in the lower spine, while the other dodged Jack’s snap-fire but barely rounded the corner before he was flung back by no less than two staff blasts to the chest.

Silence descended for a long moment. The loud clank of footsteps approached, and a serpent guard rounded the corner with its helmet down. “Fools!” he said. “You should not have come here!”

“Master Bra’tac,” Teal’c whispered, and bowed his head in solemn respect. “We owe you a debt of gratitude.”

“You owe me your lives,” the old jaffa corrected as he approached. “I sent those I met to the Chappa’ai by a more circuitous route, or you would have been overwhelmed.”

“Hey!” O’Neill objected. “We still need to use that.”

“Silence, human!” Bra’tac barked, rapping him on the nose with the back of his gauntlet. O’Neill recoiled, pinching his nose and and blinking slowly. “Apophis has sent many of his jaffa to this vessel, and the Chappa’ai will now be heavily guarded. He has ordered you all dead.”

“So we find another way off,” Carter suggested. “What about the glider bay?”

“Heavily guarded as well,” Bra’tac said. “You have condemned yourselves to death.”

“Forget that,” O’Neill said, squeezing his nose gingerly. “If all Apophis’ troops are here, can we ring over to his mothership instead?”

Teal’c and Bra’tac shared a glance. The old jaffa master worked his jaw for a moment. “The odds would be...difficult,” he said after a moment. “Almost all the Serpent Guard remained behind.”

“I’ll take difficult,” O’Neill replied instantly, giving his nose a final squeeze. “Let’s go.” He made to move past Bra’tac, only to find a closed fist pressed to his chest.

“The rings are this way,” Bra’tac said, gesturing in the opposite direction. “If we are quick, we may be undetected.” He reached for his collar, and the ponderous helmet detached from the rest of his armor with a low thunk. “If I am to die free, I will not wear this symbol of a false god.” He lifted the serpent’s head over his skullcap and simply discarded it on the floor, marching down the corridor as he did.

“...right,” O’Neill agreed as he trailed behind. “Good for you.”

The way to the ring room was fraught with pauses and moments of concealment. Now that resistance had been neutralised they were marching in larger groups down the corridors, boots clanking up and down in omnious parades. Bra’tac seemed to have almost preternatural hearing, and every time a patrol approached they ducked into a side corridor and hid behind the struts, waiting for them to pass before continuing on. O’Neill checked his watch, which was still silently counting down to the detonation of the nuke. He wasn’t sure if that was still going to happen with the gateroom in enemy hands, but either way he would prefer being off the ship before the timer hit zero.

With three minutes left on the clock they entered the ringroom. “Here,” Bra’tac said. “Stand in the circle. I will activate the rings.” He marched over to the panel, the green buttons emblazoned with Goa’uld hieroglyphics. But as he lifted his hand to press them, he paused. “There is a third ring platform in range,” he said. “It is not the other Hatak.”

“Somewhere on Earth?” Carter asked.

“It is possible,” Bra’tac stated. “But such a transit would most certainly be noticed by Apophis.”

“Well,” O’Neill said. “I for one am eager to not be anywhere near here.”

“As am I,” Teal’c agreed. “If the weapon detonates as planned these ships will both be destroyed.”

“If your weapon detonates,” Bra’tac emphasised. “The rings will not allow transport back aboard through the shields.”

“Fine by me,” O’Neill said. “Let’s go.”

Bra’tac nodded shortly and pressed several buttons, then joined them as the floor recessed to reveal the ring platform nestled into the floor. Then they shot up with a loud hum to surround the four of them and swept them away in a beam of light.

There was no gap of consciousness - one moment they were standing in the Hatak, the next they were standing in the dark, only the displacement of air and ‘whum-whum-whum’ of the descending rings proving that they had arrived at the other end. Then, with a dreadfully familiar electronic hum, the lights came on.

“Ah, crap,” O’Neill said. “Captain, where are we?” The rust-red walls and cream panels of their surroundings answered that itself, as did the crystal-studded pillars providing the majority of the light.

“We must be in an unexplored section,” Carter said, rifle up as she made her way to the door and checked the outside corridor. “There’s a flight of stairs here. I figure going up is our best option.”

The rings hummed as the floor slid away again, and a moment later they shot upwards. But this time when the light faded there were a quartet of jaffa. In the face of two automatic rifles and staff weapons, they didn’t even have time to fire to shot. O’Neill reached for his vest radio. “Major Reynolds, come in.”

There was a moment of static, then it crackled back to life. “Colonel O’Neill?”

O’Neill made a gesture for the door as the rings started to activate again, and they quickly took up position behind the doorframe. “Major, we’re somewhere in the facility and we’ve got jaffa ringing in. We need whatever security you’ve got on alert.” The inside of the rings blazed with light, and this time one of them had enough time to fire once and scorch the wall by the door before he fell dead to the ground.

“I’m getting reports of weapons fire from the lower levels,” Reynolds replied after a short pause. “I’m dispatching my security team now.”

“Sir,” Carter interrupted. “We need to lock out the rings. I hate to say it, but we only have one place to actually control anything around here.”

O’Neill paused a moment, but his hesitation vanished when the rings began to hum again. “Alright. Go! Go!”

Even Bra’tac began to run for the stairs, though not before throwing a shock grenade into the ringroom as they left, the high-pitched wail of the alien stunner following them up the stairs. “You have some means of defending against Apophis?” Bra’tac asked as they took the steps two at a time, the metal ringing with each footstep. He barely sounded winded, while both Carter and O’Neill were starting to pant. “I expected a challenge from your warships before taking position over your world.”

“Yeah,” O’Neill grunted. “We’re working on that.” He suddenly startled and raised his weapon as he saw movement, a door on the next level of the stairwell opening. “Hey!”

“Colonel, sir!” Standing in the doorway was an SF, pistol in his hands. “Major Reynolds sent us down here.”

“Are you serious?” O’Neill asked when he saw their guns. Mounting the last few steps up to their level, he lifted the strap of his M4 over his head, handing it over. “Take this.” Carter did the same as the SF stepped back to allow them through, handing hers off to a second airman. “Set up a defensive position. Watch our back.” He glanced at the jaffa. “Teal’c-”

“I will guard your rear, O’Neill,” he replied, inclining his head. “No enemy of this world will pass the doorway.”

“Great,” he replied, glancing at the other jaffa. “Bra’tac?”

The jaffa master shook his head. “I wish to see how you intend to defeat Apophis.”

“Right, sure,” he agreed. “Carter, know where we are?”

“Yes sir,” she agreed. “This way.” She set off at a jog, Jack and Bra’tac trailing her. They just had time to hear footsteps on the metal stairwell and the start of weapons fire before she opened a door and revealed the chair room, albeit from the opposite direction they had entered last time.

O’Neill showed no hesitation in jogging up and sitting down, the dark crystal of the headrest and surrounding floor lighting a vibrant blue. “Carter, what am I doing?” he asked, deferring to his subordinate. Bra’tac looked up as a hologram of the city bloomed above their heads.

“Try stopping them from ringing down, sir,” she said, a blue blip appearing for a moment on the projection. “See if there are any defenses.”

Almost as soon as the last word left her mouth there was a screeching groan, a field of energy sweeping up from the edges of the hologram to envelop the entire city in a protective dome.

“Okay,” she said, wide-eyed. “That works.” The hologram spun out without her prompting, an image of the Earth with two red blips hanging below it. She frowned. “They’re over Antarctica.”

“Apophis ordered the ships repositioned,” Bra’tac said. “I did not know why.”

“He must want this place,” she realised. “We did find Goa’uld artifacts here, but only in the unshielded levels.” She hesitated a moment as tiny blue dots appeared on the display, rising from the surface. “Sir?”

“I’m trying to shoot them,” O’Neill said, eyes shut and voice low. “Guns. Weapons. Missiles. Anything.”

“Well something’s happening,” Carter said, watching as the hundreds of tiny dots shot up in a stream, coming closer and closer to the red sensor contact. Then they touched, and one of the highlighted dots simply vanished.

“Got it!” Sam shouted. “That’s one!” The blue contacts curved over towards the second ship.

At that moment the gridlines of the sensor map seemed to deform and the remaining red dot suddenly shot away from the blue shoal of sensor contacts which had intersected the other Hatak with such effective lethality. The hologram spiraled out to chase it, the moon falling away towards the center as the other mothership fled the system.

“Apophis has entered hyperspace,” Bra’tac observed with a mixture of grim disappointment and satisfaction. “He is beyond your reach now.”

“I don’t suppose there’s any way to hit them in hyperspace?” Carter asked, staring up at the display floating above their heads. Then the floor bucked beneath their feet, sending her sprawling to the floor. Only Bra’tac remaining on his own two feet, stance wide and low as he maintained his balance. The entire building was rumbling, and the chair went dark as O’Neill’s focus faltered.

“What the hell is happening?” he shouted. “Carter!”

“I don’t know sir!” she replied over the din, clambering to her feet. “What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything!” he denied, the shaking intensifying until it felt like the walls were going to collapse around them. Carter managed to get up on her own two feet only to almost lose her balance again as her stomach lurched beneath her in a way she associated with the moment of stepping through the Gate onto a higher-gravity planet. She rushed to the exit, using the doorframe as a support to exit the room. Another lurch timed with an almost deafening roar threw her against the wall, only a heave of her entire body throwing her from one side of the adjacent corridor to the other. The wall-height stained glass window had always been dark and cold before, but now light was spilling through.

The shaking continued, but it became less and less intense. She watched in shock and horror as ice crumbled away around the towers she could now see out the window, chunks of glacier the size of skyscrapers fracturing and tumbling downwards, shattering against the superstructure the buildings jutted up from and spilling over the sides. Then down, down, down…

Atlantis rose.


	9. Disclosure

“Son, I don’t care if you have orders from the Lord Himself, I want that chopper in the air and over the Antarctic Site _immediately_.” Hammond put the phone back on the hook and turned towards the front of the control room. “McMurdo reports an earthquake and a bright light from the south, but they’re dragging their feet. Sergeant, anything more?”

Walter pressed a few keys as he continued to send enquiries and check updates to the secure nets that NORAD and by extension the SGC beneath it was linked into. “We have confirmation from SATCOM that one of the alien ships was destroyed - they have wreckage on radar. It’s starting to fall out of orbit.”

“What about the other one?” Hammond asked. “Where’s that? Where is the Antarctic Facility?”

“Sorry sir,” Walter replied. “I just don’t know.”

Hammond pursed his lips and looked at the sealed Stargate, then his watch. Orders were to open the iris for an update from the Alpha Site in just under an hour, but until then he was in the dark about the status of his SG teams. The assault had clearly failed, or if it hadn’t the destruction of one ship and disappearance of the other effectively amounted to a loss.

“Let me know if anything changes,” Hammond said, resolving to return to his office and pick up the phone. The action seemed to have concluded, and if any of his men were at the Alpha Site and wounded they’d do a hell of a lot better with Doctor Fraser than they would with the sparse medical equipment at the makeshift fallback site. He turned his back and moved for the stairs.

“Sir!” Walter said suddenly. “I’ve got a report from Deep Space Radar. They confirm that something massive appeared on an escape trajectory over Antarctica. It was still accelerating at ten Gees when they lost contact.”

“How massive?” Hammond demanded.

“At least twenty miles across, maybe more,” the sergeant replied. “Something huge.”

 

_“Still no explanation for the increase in American military preparedness. The President is reportedly in discussions with the Joint Chiefs and is unavailable…”_

 

“Military forces are standing down after a tense half-day that saw Russia and China both entering similar states of preparedness. The White House statement is that faulty missile detection system is to blame and the problem has been rectified.”

 

“Interesting developments to the excitement of the last twelve hours with reports of a possible nuclear test in Antarctica. Stations across the continent reported an earthquake and a bright flash of light. No government has claimed responsibility, and according to the International Monitoring System an asteroid strike is considered more likely.”

 

“Shocking satellite imagery this morning of the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica. The massive hole in the ice sheet is more than twenty miles wide, suggesting an extremely large meteorite may have struck the ice. Notably the area contained Amundsen’s Tower, considered one of the oldest manmade structures and evidence of advanced human civilization in pre-Antiquity. We have in the studio the Secretary of the Smithsonian, Ira Michael Heyman, who oversees the collection of Archeo-Egyptian artifacts from the tower. Secretary Heyman, isn’t that one of your most popular exhibits?”

“Yes, Amundsen’s Tower and by extension the idea that in the distant past humanity equalled and perhaps even surpassed our understanding of the world today is a popular one, and if the Tower itself has been destroyed by this terrible stroke of fate we are poorer not just as students of history, but as a species...”

 

“Controversy over the reasons behind the United States military entering DEFCON 3 yesterday amid accusations by the governments of Russia, China, and multiple eye-witnesses that the increase in American military preparedness was underway over two hours before the event in Antarctica - believed to be a meteor strike - happened, even if official statements claim otherwise. Thusfar there has been no response to this from the White House. With me is an expert in foreign affairs, Professor George Hilton. Professor, are these statements from Russia and China politically motivated, or is there really something going on here?”

“Well, all statements are politically motivated for one reason or another, and here the obvious motive is to put pressure on Washington, but it’s important to remember that that doesn’t mean it’s not true…”

 

“Over a week now since the latest scandal began, and this looks like it’s going to be a big one. The House and Senate are demanding answers from the Administration across party lines, and there are rumblings that if they don’t get what they want there will be consequences. But so far the White House has remained stubbornly silent, as has most of NATO and, interestingly, Russia and China since that initial announcement that set this firestorm in motion. The question now is why, and what ‘consequences’ could there be if the executive branch continues its current course?”

 

“This press conference from the White House is of course long-awaited, after two tumultuous weeks that in the last few days seems to have been on the verge of toppling the current Administration. Of course the really strange thing to those of us here in Washington is how long it has taken for this to happen, especially under the current pressure. Practically every major news outlet in the world has been invited, so the question is if we’re going to get a good explanation or an attempt to put out the fire. Well, it looks like we’re about to find out. We’re going to the White House conference now, where the President has just taken the podium…”

“My fellow Americans, citizens, and visitors from abroad. I come before you today to not just offering an explanation for the events that have caused so much strife to our nation but to usher in a new chapter in our history. What I am about to say may seem fantastical to many, and may challenge our faith and convictions. But America has always been at the forefront of the world in adopting new ideas, whether it be political accountability, religious freedom, or welcoming new people into our community. Here too I believe that America will stand tall and help lead the world into a new era.

In 1928, on the Giza Plateau…”


	10. Debriefing 1

Hammond straightened his crisp blue dress uniform, glancing at his shoulder and the unfamiliar third star on his epaulette. Lieutenant General George Hammond...to think that a year and a half ago he had been ready to retire, sat in the basements of NORAD keeping an eye on a presumably defunct Top Secret artifact. Now he was a household name, and half the time he stayed on the base rather than go home to potential ambushes by the press. But at least he had his base, his command, and by God he’d fought tooth and nail to keep it that way.

There was a knock on his office door. Master Sergeant Harriman was standing there in the open frame, knuckles resting on the open door. “Sir?” he said. “They’re ready for you.” Hammond gave him a nod, and went back to straighten his tie one last time.

“Time?” Hammond asked.

“Eleven fifty five, sir.”

“Better hurry, then,” Hammond said. “Hell of a ride to get this far, Sergeant,” he said. “Hell of a ride.”

“We’re not getting off just yet, sir,” Walter replied, and Hammond paused a moment.

“Colonel O’Neill said something similar,” the general said eventually. “That we shouldn’t get off the ride just yet.”

“Think they’re still out there, sir?” Harriman asked.

“If they are,” Hammond said simply, “we’ll find them.” He looked over. “Let’s go.” Picking up his cap from the desk and securing it squarely on his head, he left the office and descended the stairs from the briefing room to the control room in a familiar ritual. The Stargate was just through the glass, the iris shut tight over its mouth. Inside the embarkation room but just short of the ramp itself was a small throng of armed and fully-geared personnel. The blast door into the repurposed silo was open already, and Hammond strode through with his back straight and head held high. Conversation died as he mounted the ramp halfway and turned back to face them.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “it is my distinct pleasure to welcome you into the beating heart of this facility. You are going to be the frontline of defense for this planet and her representatives to the rest of the galaxy. The eyes of the world are going to be on you, and while it may not know what you do, they will know the risks you take.” Hammond jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. “The Ancient Egyptians called this a doorway to heaven, and make no mistake: it is a doorway. It will test you in ways you will not expect, and it will test you in ways you may not be prepared for.” He did his best to meet the eyes of every person there, scanning the room. Silence lingered for several long moments as he did.

“In two days,” Hammond continued, “the Stargate will be officially unsealed. It will be witnessed by the Presidents of the United States, Russia, and France; the Prime Ministers of Great Britain, Canada, and Germany; and the Premier of China. They and half the world will watch as you walk through the Gate as representatives of not only your nation, but your planet.”

There wasn’t a trace of anxiety on any face, although some were more stony than others. Hammond allowed himself a smile. “In light of that, we don’t want anyone to look bad. So a practice run has been agreed.” He nodded to Walter, who was sitting behind the glass at the dialing computer. There was a low rumble as the Stargate began to spin, followed by the screeching of the iris opening to unblock the Gate. “Provided clear probe telemetry, you will securing the Alpha Site and practicing your offworld protocols for the next twelve hours.”

“Chevron One encoded.”

One of the team leaders, a Russian, stepped forward. “General Hammond,” he said, accent clear enough to emphasis some syllables over others. “Is there any potential for hostile contact?”

“Chevron Two encoded.”

Hammond smiled a touch ruefully. “In my experience, Colonel, stepping through the Stargate makes anything possible. The Alpha Site planet may have been known to the Goa’uld, but we have no indication that they have been there in recent history. It should be secure.”

“Chevron Three encoded.”

One of the soldiers coughed and raised a hand, stepping forward as well. “General,” he said with a British twang. “Why were we not briefed of this beforehand?” Hammond’s watch silently ticked over from 11:59 to 12:00.

“Chevron Four encoded.”

Hammond chuckled. “Colonel, you’ll be finding a lot more things in your future are on short notice or no notice. Better get used to it now.”

“Chevron Five-” There was a loud thunk as the remaining chevrons all lit a brilliant orange. “Offworld activation!”

“Defensive positions!” Hammond bellowed, descending the ramp as the Stargate burst to life behind him in a shock of blue light. The plume roared out over the space Hammond had been standing a few seconds earlier and fortunately did nothing more than create a short-lived vacuum in the wake of its retreat, the air and its constituent molecules disassembled into the mouth of the incoming wormhole.

Cheyenne Mountain was bathed in the glow of an active Stargate. Hammond stepped behind the defensive line of the multinational SG teams, but nothing appeared in their moment of weakness. Not for the first time he silently cursed the directive to reconfigure the iris rather than just outright burying the gate in a pile of soil, which would have been far more rapidly reversible.

The event horizon shimmered, the fluctuation filling the embarkation room with a gentle burble. Nothing appeared. No Jaffa came streaming through with weapons blazing, no Goa’uld demanded they worship them. Hammond glanced at the open blast door out of the silo and walked through, making a quick right and right again to enter the control room. “Sergeant,” he said. “Are we receiving anything?”

Walter double checked, and shrugged helplessly. “Nothing sir. It’s just...open.”

Then the intercom crackled. “SGC this is Major Reynolds, authentication November-India-Delta-Five-Niner-Seven. Please respond. I repeat, this is Major Reynolds, authentication November-India-Delta-Five-Niner-Seven. Please respond.” Walter’s fingers tapped at his keyboard along with the message, and although the keys might have been replaced with the glyphs on the Stargate nobody who ran duty in the control room couldn’t touch-type.

“Checks out, sir,” he said, glancing up at the general. “It’s Major Reynold’s identification code.”

Hammond shook his head. “That means nothing if he’s been taken over by a Gould.” Despite the countless briefings he had given over the last months to all sorts of military and political leaders, he easily slipped back into the SGC habit of shortening the name of their adversary. He reached forward for the microphone, depressing the transmit switch.

“Major Reynolds, this is General Hammond,” he enunciated clearly. “You are not authorised to pass through the Stargate. I repeat, you are not authorised. Any attempt to do so will be met with lethal force. Do you understand?” He waited a long moment, but no response came. He was about to demand a response when the channel crackled to life again. But this time it wasn’t Reynolds.

“General,” O’Neill drawled, “I think I speak for everyone here when I say we’d really like to come home.”

Hammond startled, a laugh of surprised delight crinkling the edges of his eyes. “Colonel, you are overdue to report!”

“I’d love to, sir,” O’Neill said, “but I have this pathological aversion to being shot.”

Hammond glanced at Walter, tongue pressing into his cheek as the general considered this. His men were on the other side of that wormhole, but Stargate Operations had not yet officially resumed. His finger tapped several times on the transmit switch of the mic, but he didn’t push it for several long moments. Then he leaned forward. “Colonel O’Neill, I will permit you to come through the Stargate for debriefing.”

There was a long pause. “About that, General,” he said after a moment, a touch awkwardly. “I’m not saying I wouldn’t be able to debrief you to your full satisfaction on the very exciting time we’ve had out here, but I’m sure Captain Carter would...appreciate the opportunity to add some...small details.”

Hammond chuckled, taking the message for what it was. “Captain Carter is welcome to join you, Colonel. In fact, I insist.”

“Thank you sir,” O’Neill said brightly. “I’m sure she’ll be thrilled. We’ll be through in a moment.”

Hammond switched the microphone. “Defense teams, stand ready. Do not open fire except on my direct order.” The assembled soldiers didn’t so much as move, weapons still trained firmly on the Stargate. They waited.

When a whole thirty seconds had passed, Hammond switched the microphone back. “Colonel O’Neill, is there a problem?”

The radio’s background static reappeared. “Yeah, about that, General. I’ve got this rather insistent Jaffa here who insists on coming along, so-”

“Yes, you can all come,” Hammond said, a touch exasperatedly. “Just get through, Colonel.”

“Yes, sir!” he replied, a touch more brightly than Hammond associated with the sometimes sarcastic but more often taciturn officer.

Only a few moments later the Stargate’s event horizon rippled as O’Neill stepped through in the same uniform he had left in six months ago, albeit without his flak jacket or weapon. He stopped after a step in the face of all the guns pointed his way. There was another squelch and rippled as Sam Carter stepped through as well, and Hammond felt himself straighten in pride that his people were alive and well. They would need a trip to medical, but they didn’t walk with the arrogance of a Goa’uld. Then the third person stepped through, and Hammond blinked in confusion. “What in God's name…” he breathed, marching out of the control room and back into the silo. “Colonel O’Neill!” he demanded. “Who is this?”

The Jaffa he was referring to may not have carried a staff weapon, but there was some kind of device strapped to his bracer and he lacked the looming presence of Teal’c, or, for that matter, the same skin, hair, or symbol on his forehead. O’Neill coughed awkwardly. “General Hammond, this is Herak. He’s my…” he turned to look at Carter for a moment. “Personal assistant.”

“I will be First Prime to Lord O’Neill,” the Jaffa said, a touch arrogantly. “I warn you, any attempt to harm him will suffer grave retribution.”

“Yeah, yeah,” O’Neill muttered. “Settle down, sparky.”

Hammond looked back and forth between them. O’Neill looked awkward, Carter apologetic, and the Jaffa was practically sneering. “Colonel,” he said dangerously. “You better have a damn good explanation for this.”

“It’s a doozy, General. It’s a doozy.”


	11. Debriefing 2

The briefing room was pretty much as O’Neill remembered it, polished wooden table clashing with utilitarian concrete. He took a seat with a long sigh, enjoying the way it tilted back a little. Carter was less dramatic, taking hers while glancing out the window to where Herak was glowering at the assembled and very much foreign SG teams down by the Stargate.

“Something you want to tell us about what’s been going on around here, General?” O’Neill asked.

“Classified,” Hammond said. “But needless to say certain secrets have come to light in your absence.”

“You’re kidding,” Carter gaped. “Really? Just governments or-”

“Everyone,” Hammond said shortly. “But you can be briefed on all that later. Right now I want to know what in blazes you’ve been up to. Or, for that matter, where the hell you’ve been.”

“Funny,” O’Neill observed. “Reynolds said the same thing.”

 

_“Colonel, where the hell are we?” Reynolds demanded, visibly discomfited. “The whole place nearly shook us to death.”_

_“It wasn’t anything I did, Major.” O’Neill denied. “I can tell you that much.”_

_Carter winced a little. “I disagree, sir. Given you had access to major systems like weapons and defenses, propulsion seems reasonable.”_

_“I didn’t tell this place to fly,” he rejoined, a touch sarcastically. “I think I’d remember that.”_

_“Maybe you didn’t have to,” Carter replied. “It only started when Apophis engaged his faster-than-light drive.”_

_“Hyperdrive.” Teal’c murmured._

_“Right,” Carter agreed, accepting the correction. “Are you saying that you didn’t have any urge to chase him? Close the distance?” She worried her lower lip for a moment at O’Neill’s silence and shaking head. “Not even frustration that he’d got away?” she asked. “The control interface might have been more deeply tied than we realised.”_

_“For the last time, Captain,” O’Neill said, a touch sharply. “I said no.”_

_Sam sighed. “I guess it doesn’t really matter,” she admitted. “Sir, I still think you should sit back down in that chair and try and control this place. Right now we don’t even know where we’re going.”_

_“If your theory is correct,” Reynolds pointed out, “We’re going wherever Apophis is going.”_

_Teal’c and Bra’tac exchanged a glance. Teal’c spoke first. “Humiliating defeat is a time of instability,” he said. “His losses will invite attempts by other Goa’uld to overthrow him.”_

_“He must make a show of strength,” Bra’tac added. “He will go to Chulak, so that he might secure his territory.”_

_“Chulak is only two thousand light years,” Carter said. “How fast can a mothership cover that sort of distance?”_

_“Only?” O’Neill asked, quotation marks practically audible. Carter shrugged._

_Bra’tac and Teal’c again held a silent conversation. Teal’c inclined his head, and Bra’tac spoke. “We do not know.”_

_“...great.”_

 

“So we settled in for the long wait,” O’Neill said, leaning back in the briefing chair and apparently enjoying the cushioning. Hammond stared at him, almost unable to reconcile the hard-edged and occasionally borderline disobedient soldier with the relaxed and carelessly impudent man in front of him. “Apparently intergalactic travel takes a while.”

“Interstellar,” Carter corrected quietly, glancing down at her hands where they were folded against the tabletop.

“Right,” O’Neill agreed. “That.”

Hammond shook his head, almost like he was emerging from a daze. “Alright,” he said. “Obviously you didn’t stay there forever. So what then?”

 

_They only noticed when they emerged from hyperspace a few hours later by the looking out the window at the top of the stairs running up from the Stargate, the transition from faster than light travel to sublight being otherwise seamless. Carter barely had time to open her mouth to point out the change from where they were sat on the stairs near the Stargate when the whole city rumbled beneath them for a moment. As a group they hurried to the window just in time to see the wreckage of the Hatak burning._

 

“Apophis is dead?” the general repeated. “Can you confirm that?”

“We kind of ran into him,” O’Neill said. “...literally.”

“We came out of hyperspace right behind him,” Carter clarified. “We had the shields up and massed a lot more, so…”

“Splat, sir.” O’Neill explained. “Turned his mothership into a big smear.”

“That doesn’t explain the Jaffa,” Hammond pointed out. “Or your new title.”

O’Neill rocked back on his heels a little, visibly uncomfortable. “Well it turns out that turning Old Snakey into interstellar roadkill then crashing a city into the mountains was rather Biblical for them.”

“I’m sorry, you what?” Hammond asked.

 

_SG-1 looked out the window as the last orange flames of combusting oxygen faded to invisibility in the darkness of space, golden-plated and utilitarian black wreckage from Apophis’ pyramid-ship bouncing off the curtain of light which made up the city’s shield._

_“Well that just happened,” O’Neill said, craning his neck to glance out the side of the window as the tip of the pyramid fell away behind the side of the shield. “...wow.”_

_“Uh, sir?” Carter said. “We may have a problem.”_

_O’Neill glanced at her and then towards her wide-eyed stare. The planet ‘above’ them was becoming larger with every passing second. “I guess it’s too much to hope that this thing is going to slow down by itself.”_

_There was a momentary silence as Carter shot him an alarmed look, and even Teal’c’s eyes widened._

_“Right,” he agreed, sounding rather resigned. Then he burst into a run. Carter bit her lip and moved to follow, then jerked back to the window as she saw the shield start to change color._

_Atlantis descended top-down through the atmosphere, and although her automatic deceleration for hyperspace had slowed her down enough that the shock heating merely glowed a gentle red against the shield rather than a fierce orange, the reality was that gravity was making its inexorable fall to the planet below uncomfortably fast. Carter looked ‘up’ from just inside the stained glass window of the Stargate level. The mountains below were beginning to take on alarming clarity. “Sir! You need to turn us around and fire the engines now!”_

_O’Neill sprinted the last few meters and squeezed through the opening door so fast he wrenched the clips of his flak jacket apart and left it behind to fall to the ground in the doorframe. He mounted the chair’s pedestal in a single step and practically threw himself into it, stark light shining down from above as the control chair activated and drew him back into a reclining position._

_Atlantis was a big city, and unlike her smaller cousin a galaxy away she had not been built ground up with an integrated stardrive and associated gravity fields for maneuvering. The city began to ponderously turn on its axis, not just having to rotate some forty kilometers of multi-billion ton city but also contend with air resistance that attempted to turn the domed shield back towards the ground as it plunged downwards._

_“We’re not going to make it,” Carter breathed, watching the ground tilt away from them but still growing larger. “Sir, the second you can start slowing us down-”_

_The city tilted past the ninety degree mark, and the moment it was a little further than that the air resistance was suddenly on their side, forcing the lowest edge up in concert with the city’s own systems. The stardrive fired, throwing almost everyone standing up down to the ground with bruising force. The whole city rattled and shook as engine feedback vibrated through the superstructure, but it began to slow._

_Then the alarm went off, a discordant electronic chiming as the landing system tried to automate a touchdown that promised an impact at thousands of miles an hour. O’Neill’s eyes squeezed even more tightly shut as the control interface’s subconscious feedback became a clamour of danger/warning/speed/damage, emotions and ideas more than words. The ground loomed beneath them, cragged mountains and solid rock, far from the gentle water the city was designed for. He found that extra bit of unused capacity in the stardrive and pushed._

_Light blotted out the sky as the stardrive increased to full power, designed for when it was clear of the surface and could accelerate safely. The bottom of the piers went from a bright but controlled blue glare to a white nova of incandescence. The mountains beneath were blasted by pure kinetic force, pulverising the rock directly beneath the bulk of the city._

_Atlantis went from a thousand meters per second to fifty in less than a second. Slow, but it would have been overly fast even if they had been landing in water. They hit solid rock instead, albeit rock which had been somewhat flattened beneath the piers of the city by the stardrive._

_Four million years late, Atlantis had finally left Earth._

 

Hammond gaped at them.

Carter smiled weakly. “When word got out that we’d killed Apophis, some of the Jaffa converted there and then. Many fled through the Chulak Stargate with news of the giant city landing in the mountains, and when we repelled Heru’ur’s attempt to take the city about a month later a good half of Apophis’ former territory pledged loyalty to their new gods.”

“Are you saying that thousands of people are worshipping you as gods?” The general demanded in shock.

“Hundreds of thousands,” Carter winced. “Sorry, sir. It just kind of...happened.” 

“You have a talent for understatement!” Hammond said angrily. “What does Teal’c think of this?”

“Not thrilled, sir,” Jack admitted. “He and Bra’tac have been redirecting it as best they can into a sort of anti-Goa’uld thing, new against the old, but either way the city has become a holy site for the Jaffa.”

There was a long moment of silence. “I leave you alone for six months,” Hammond said eventually. “Colonel, you do try my patience.”


End file.
